lua-fltk and read

[John <john@...>]

Hello,

I am working on some simple GUI admin tools which use lua-fltk.  
The following script works in Lua40, but not lua-fltk which is based on Lua40.  Does anybody know of a workaround which will work with lua-fltk?
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readfrom("|ls -l")
d =read("*a")
print(d)
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Thanks much,
John Andrews