Don't know how to make a program work. Please help.

I've tried to write a simple program that lets the user enter a computers ID then a message and send it. It should be stupidly simple but I can't figure out variables so I need some help. This is the code I tried to use:

print("Target ID:")
local input = read()
print("Message:")
local input2 = read()
rednet.send(input, "input2") – I want the inputs to get stuck in here automaticaly but don't know how

Any ideas?

The id needs to be a number read outputs a string so you need to tonumber() the read

print("Target ID:")
local input = tonumber(read())
print("Message:")
local input2 = read()
rednet.send(input, "input2")

your so close.

rednet.send( tonumber( input ), input2 )

tonumber turns the string that the user has entered into a number ( which is what rednet.send needs )

NOTE: Also dont forget to open and close rednet with

rednet.open( "left" ) -- replacing left with the side the modem is on

rednet.close( "left" ) -- replacing left with the side the modem is on 

Axolotl, on 18 January 2013 - 04:10 PM said:

rednet.send(input, "input2") – I want the inputs to get stuck in here automaticaly but don't know how

When sending a variable, exclude the quotation marks.

Off-Topic: Why do you need to close rednet? I never do it, and I can't see a reason to.

On-Topic = nil

Dlcruz129, on 18 January 2013 - 06:11 PM said:

Off-Topic: Why do you need to close rednet? I never do it, and I can't see a reason to.

I never close mine either, in fact on SSP I have autorun program setup that opens rednet on any computer with a modem attached at startup.

Dlcruz129, on 18 January 2013 - 06:11 PM said:

Off-Topic: Why do you need to close rednet? I never do it, and I can't see a reason to.

Its good practice to close anything you open. And if you get in the habit of opening stuff without closing it you may start forgetting to close things that NEED closing, like file handles.

There are performance issues that can arise for computers/turtles that have modems open in an area cluttered with rednet broadcast spam. If you don't have a lot of rednet broadcast spam, then this makes little difference, but if you have a lot of turtles using a GPS system, then it does help to have them close their modems when they aren't locating themselves.

It's also good practice, but not so good that I bother to do it for no real reason.

I wrote a program called Redsend to run a program from a remote computer…

function cmod()
        write("Modem Side: ")
        local cmodi = read()
    if rednet.isOpen(cmodi) == true then
        rof = "ONLINE"
        else
        rednet.open(cmodi)
    end
end

function receive()
        local id, msg = rednet.receive()
        rednet.send(tonumber(id), "Received")
        shell.run(tostring(msg))
        print("Running ", msg)
    end

function send()
        write("Computer ID: ")
        local sendid = read()
        write("Program: ")
        local pinput = read()
        rednet.send(tonumber(sendid), tostring(pinput), false)
        sleep(1)
        local id1 = rednet.receive()
    if id1 == sendid then
        print("Return: Sent")
        else
        print("Failed: No return")
    end
end
cmod()
print(rof)
parallel.waitForAny(send, receive)

Thanks. That explains why I kept getting the "expected positive number" message. I didn't know that you had to define what kind of variable it was.