lpty: pty control for lua

What is it?

lpty is a module that allows a program written in lua to open the master side of a PTY and start a program with the slave side of the PTY as its controlling terminal. The PTY may then be read from and written to, thus controlling the remote program.

What's new in version 1.2.2 (2017-07-05)

proper tostring method
added va_end() in _lpty_error
fixed 2 potential memory leaks where the result of realloc was ignored
fixed memory leak in _lpty_execvpe
added checks for first argument in lpty_[gs]etenviron

What's new in version 1.2.1 (2016-07-17)

fixed a bug where lpty:readline() could have returned an error if the read from the pty just returned 0. Bug discovered and fix provided by Robert Kumpulainen robrnen@gmail.com
small change to timeout handling

What's new in version 1.2 (2015-09-08)

verified lua 5.3 compatibility
added pty:setflag() method
make the newly created pty the controlling terminal for the created session, contributed by Ard van Breemen ard@kwaak.net
added separate_stderr option for pty creation, together with the readerr() and geterrfd() methods.
small fix to luarocks file

Documentation

README: lpty README file
CHANGELOG: what has changed from version to version.

You may also want to read up on how PTYs work by consulting the pty(7) manpage. A more extensive treatment of the matter can be found here

Download

You can get lpty-1.2.2 by clicking on this link, or by installing it from the luarocks repository. If you fetch it from here, the included README gives hints on how to build it.

There is also a repository at https://codeberg.org/gnarz/lpty which gets changes I make between the releases.

License

The lpty module and all accompanying documentation and additional source code is released under the MIT/X11 license.

Copyright (c) 2010-2017 Gunnar Zötl 
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Contact

If you have anything to say about this, comments, bug reports, whatever, feel free to email them to