I wasn't aware about its lack of Unicode support and this is sad! D: [EDIT] Maybe libraries? Or some boilerplate functions in a file... http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaUnicode

The syntax does not seems that noisy to me:
- while ... do ... end/done,
- if ... then ... elseif/elif ... else fi/end,
- for ... do ... end/done
... are present in both shell script and lua.

I am very new to lua, but yet I agree it being the right spot between C and shell script (I do not know C neither!). Impressive feature: ANSI C only, so it compiles everywhere.

I really like its ability to return multiple values and having very small set of types and features that can combine together to give other features, and types.

1-indexing is unusual for me, but well... small issue for what I do with it. [EDIT] As well as two spaces for indentation rather than tabs, but it does not seems to be a standard anyway...