scite not showing program output in a pop-up window ubuntu

Question

I am running lua script via scite in Ubuntu 12.04. When I execute an io.read program. example: (each command is on a separate line)

io.write("Please enter a number: ")
user_input = io.read()
print(user_input)

When I execute the program, I don't get a separate pop-up dialogue window asking for the user input.

I get, on the right hand side of the code, the following output:

> lua5.1 "io_examples.lua"
Please enter a number: nil

I know this may sound stupid, but how do I get the pop-up output window asking the the user's input?

Answer 1

How I finally got the program to execute correctly was from running it via ubuntu terminal. I simply had to cd to the directory where the program was located, then type "lua . I didn't get the neat pop-up window, but the code executed correctly.

Answer 2

The nil returned by io.read could be a hint that an error has occurred during reading. You can check this by surrounding your io.read statement with an assert:

local user_input = assert(io.read())

or

local user_input = assert(io.read("*number")).

My initial guess is that you received a: bad file descriptor caused because the standard input (stdin) is not set.

More information can be found here:

http://www.lua.org/pil/21.1.html

http://www.lua.org/pil/8.html