Colored text?

[Patrick <spell_gooder_now@...>]

From the bash prompt I am able to get red text with this:
echo -e "This is red->\e[00;31mRED\e[00m"

but I can't figure out how to do this in Lua? Is there a way? I hope I 
am not lowering the S/N ratio with too many stupid questions.....

-- Patrick