I use lua to make some complex job to prepare arguments for macros in Tex/LaTex.
Part I
Here is a stupid minimal example :
\newcommand{\test}{\luaexec{tex.print("11,12")}}% aim to create 11,12
\def\compare#1,#2.{\ifthenelse{#1<#2}{less}{more}}
\string\compare11,12. : \compare11,12.\\ %answer is less
\string\test : \test\\ % answer is 11,12
\string\compare : \compare\test. % generate an error
The last line creates an error. Obviously, Tex did not detect the "," included in \test.
How can I do so that \test is understood as 11 followed by , followed by 12 and not the string 11,12 and finally used as a correctly formed argument for \compare ?
There are several misunderstandings of how TeX works.
Your \compare macro wants to find something followed by a comma, then something followed by a period. However when you call
\compare\test
no comma is found, so TeX keeps looking for it until finding either the end of file or a \par (or a blank line as well). Note that TeX never expands macros when looking for the arguments to a macro.
You might do
\expandafter\compare\test.
provided that \test immediately expands to tokens in the required format, which however don't, because the expansion of \test is
\luaexec{tex.print("11,12")}
and the comma is hidden by the braces, so it doesn't count. But it wouldn't help nonetheless.
The problem is the same: when you do
\newcommand{\test}{\luaexec{tex.print("11,12")}}
the argument is not expanded. You might use “expanded definition” with \edef, but the problem is that \luaexec is not fully expandable.
If you do
\edef\test{\directlua{tex.sprint("11,12")}}
then
\expandafter\compare\test.
would work.
