a) lua_dofile does that. It loads it into memory, parses it, and then executes it. I don't know of any scripting language that does this in another way.
b) Technically, no. Check this for an example of how to work around it in a moderately convenient manner. Specifically, use tables. If you just want to pass a pointer to a type or an integer handle, though, then that's simple as pie.. then again, I seem to fail at making pie quite frequently, so maybe that's a bad example.
c) Far Cry, Painkiller, Baldur's Gate, etc. are all scripted using Lua. It's proven that it's fast and efficient time and time again.
Edit: And I would highly avoid using Pub.LuaScript, but that's 'cause I prefer my own interface.
b) Technically, no. Check this for an example of how to work around it in a moderately convenient manner. Specifically, use tables. If you just want to pass a pointer to a type or an integer handle, though, then that's simple as pie.. then again, I seem to fail at making pie quite frequently, so maybe that's a bad example.
c) Far Cry, Painkiller, Baldur's Gate, etc. are all scripted using Lua. It's proven that it's fast and efficient time and time again.
Edit: And I would highly avoid using Pub.LuaScript, but that's 'cause I prefer my own interface.