I'm working on a basic project in Lua. I've been trying to get data from files using the IO API (as defined here), but when I open a file and give it a handle, it doesn't seem to return a table of functions. The (erroneous bit of) code: local unread = fs.list("email/"..from.."/") local send = "" for _,file in ipairs(unread) do local handle = io.open(file,"r") local text = handle:read("*a") send = send .. text .. "\n" handle.close() fs.delete(file) end The fs you see on the first line is a professional filesystem wrapper round the IO API, not my work and perfectly error-free, so that's not the problem. However, when I try to read the file (handle:read()), it throws "attempt to index nil". Tracing it, it turns out that handle itself is nil. Any ideas?