# Is io.popen available in lua?

**URL:** https://community.aseprite.org/t/is-io-popen-available-in-lua/21572
**Category:** Scripts & Extensions
**Created:** [February 27, 2024, 11:04pm UTC](https://community.aseprite.org/t/is-io-popen-available-in-lua/21572 "2024-02-27T23:04:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![jest](https://community.aseprite.org/user_avatar/community.aseprite.org/jest/32/5077_2.png) [@jest](https://community.aseprite.org/u/jest)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2024, 11:04pm UTC](https://community.aseprite.org/t/is-io-popen-available-in-lua/21572/1 "2024-02-27T23:04:01Z")

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[https://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#pdf-io.popen](https://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#pdf-io.popen)  
If not, is there an alternative? I need to execute a CLI program and read its text output. Currently I’m writing that to a file `os.execute` instead and reading it from there.