I am using Luainterface 2.0.3 to embed Lua in a c# application.
Everything is working fine, except in visual Studio's debug mode, the Lua's print function does not get written to the console (nor to Output).
using System;
using LuaInterface;
namespace Lua1 {
class Program {
static void Main(string[] args) {
Lua lua = new Lua();
lua.DoString("print 'Hello from Lua!'");
}
}
}
Running it in non debugging mode, print is working fine.
Am I missing something?
Thanks!
Unfortunately, you are probably up against a known deficiency in the print()
function, which is really intended for quick and dirty debugging at a console prompt, and is missing some necessary flexibility.
The base library function print()
implemented by luaB_print()
in lbaselib.c explicitly uses the C runtime's stdout
stream as its destination. Since it refers to the global variable stdout
explicitly in its implementation, the only way to redirect it is to cause that file handle to be redirected. In a C program that can be done by calling freopen(stdout,...)
. Unfortunately, there isn't a stock library function in Lua that can do that.
The io
library is implemented in liolib.c. It uses the function environment to hold a table of open file descriptors, and during its initialization it creates file
objects named io.stdin
, io.stdout
and io.stderr
for the three standard descriptors. It also provides functions named io.output
and io.input
to allow those two descriptors to be modified to point to any open file
object (or a newly opened file if a file name is passed). However, those functions only change the function environment table and do not call freopen()
to modify the C runtime's table of FILE
values.
I have no idea how LuaInterface attempts to treat the standard C runtime's idea of stdout
. It may very well be that stdout
is not connected to anything useful in the VS debugger because it probably takes advantage of some .NET feature to capture output from the module being debugged that may not be all that compatible with C in any case.
That said, it is easy to replace the standard print
function. Just use existing features of LuaInterface to write a global function named print
that calls tostring()
on each argument and passes it to the whatever .NET things is the standard output device.
I haven't used LuaInterface, so I can't say for sure, but you might want to try manually calling
io.output(io.stdout)
Looking at Programming in Lua ch 21.1, they explain how you can redirect where print
's output goes by setting io.output. See also the IO Library Tutorial.
I'm unsure whether this will actually solve the problem, however, as I can't find anything related to io.output being set in the LuaInterface source on Google Code.
Here a code sample how to use the LuaDLL class used in the LuaInterface to redirect the lua print function:
// See http://medek.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/wrapping-lua-errors-and-print-function/
static int LuaPrint(IntPtr L)
{
int nArgs = LuaDLL.lua_gettop(L);
LuaDLL.lua_getglobal(L, "tostring");
string ret = ""; //this is where we will dump the output
//make sure you start at 1 *NOT* 0
for(int i = 1; i <= nArgs; i++)
{
LuaDLL.lua_pushvalue(L, -1);
LuaDLL.lua_pushvalue(L, i);
LuaDLL.lua_call(L, 1, 1);
string s = LuaDLL.lua_tostring(L, -1);
if(s == null)
return LuaDLL.luaL_error(L, "\"tostring\" must return a string to \"print\"");
if(i > 1) ret += "\t";
ret += s;
LuaDLL.lua_pop(L, 1);
};
//Send it wherever
Console.Out.WriteLine(ret);
return 0;
}
The initialization of lua in C# look like:
IntPtr luaState = LuaDLL.luaL_newstate();
LuaDLL.luaL_openlibs(luaState);
LuaDLL.lua_newtable(luaState);
LuaDLL.lua_setglobal(luaState, "luanet");
Lua l = new Lua(luaState.ToInt64());
LuaDLL.lua_register(luaState, "print", new LuaCSFunction(LuaPrint));
Replace line 7 in file "lua/etc/luavs.bat"
@set MYCOMPILE=cl /nologo /MD /O2 /W3 /c /D_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE
with
@set MYCOMPILE=cl /nologo /MDd /Od /W3 /c /D_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE
and recompile lua with the debug version of MSVCRT. After that your output will be redirected as expected.