The path used by require (modname) to search for a Lua loader.

At start-up, Lua initializes this variable with the value of the environment variable LUA_PATH or with a default path defined in luaconf.h, if the environment variable is not defined. Any "=;;=" in the value of the environment variable is replaced by the default path.

A path is a sequence of templates separated by semicolons. For each template, require (modname) will change each interrogation mark in the template by filename, which is modname with each dot replaced by a "directory separator" (such as "=/=" in Unix); then it will try to load the resulting file name. So, for instance, if the Lua path is

     "./?.lua;./?.lc;/usr/local/?/init.lua"

the search for a Lua loader for module foo will try to load the files ./foo.lua, ./foo.lc, and /usr/local/foo/init.lua, in that order.