How do you construct a read-write pipe with lua?

Question

I\'d like to do the equivalent of:

foo=$(echo \"$foo\"|someprogram)

within lua -- ie, I\'ve got a variable containing a bunch of text, and

Answer 1

Aha, a possibly better solution:

require('posix')
require('os')
require('io')

function splat_popen(data,cmd)
   rd,wr = posix.pipe()
   io.flush()
   child = posix.fork()
   if child == 0 then
      rd:close()
      wr:write(data)
      io.flush()
      os.exit(1)
   end
   wr:close()

   rd2,wr2 = posix.pipe()
   io.flush()
   child2 = posix.fork()
   if child2 == 0 then
      rd2:close()
      posix.dup(rd,io.stdin)
      posix.dup(wr2,io.stdout)
      posix.exec(cmd)
      os.exit(2)
   end
   wr2:close()
   rd:close()

   y = rd2:read("*a")
   rd2:close()

   posix.wait(child2)
   posix.wait(child)

   return y
end

munged=splat_popen("hello, world","/usr/games/rot13")
print("munged: "..munged.." !")