Help with sting compare?

[Ron Hudson <ron.hudson@...>]

I can do this from interactive lua and it seems to work, but when I  
use it in
a lua program it does not work..

I am reading through a file that has variable length records, records  
are separated
with a line containing only the "&". The last line in the file has "&&".

repeat
    aline = read.io()
    if aline == "&" then
      count = count + 1
    end
until aline == "&&"

Neither "&" or "&&" are ever detected.
I have checked the file... & and && are the only thing in the line.
I also have ">" .. aline .. "<" printed and see >&<

I don't get it... it should be straight forward.