Any way to make the Lua debug interpreter look more like an interactive interpreter?

Question

I like the convenience of shorthand '=' in the Lua interactive interpreter. I also like how print ii is returned. Is there a way to get this functionality inside the debug interpreter?

ii REPL

a = 3
= a
> 3

debug mode

a = 3
print(a)
> 3

Yes, it is not so difficult to print print (a), but muscle memory makes me type = a every time, and after a while it can get annoyed.