LuaLaTeX and counters

Question

I'm trying to use values from expanded macros within a direct lua block, but I can't figure out how to get a value from any macro that has braces in it.

\directlua { tex.print(\value{footnote}} } 

Never works the way i expect it, All i want it to do is for it to print out the current value of the counter footnote. Do I need to escape the braces?

A minimal example that doesnt work:

\documentclass[12pt, a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{a4paper}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{epstopdf}
\begin{document}
\footnote{hello}
\directlua { tex.enableprimitives('',tex.extraprimitives()) }
\catcode `\{=1
\catcode `\}=2
\directlua { here = here or {}; here.foo = 5 }
\directlua { here = here or {}; tex.print(here.foo + 5) }
\directlua { tex.print(\value{footnote}} }
\end{document}

And the errors;

*geometry* driver: auto-detecting
*geometry* detected driver: pdftex
(/usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf-dist/tex/context/base/supp-pdf.mkii
[Loading MPS to PDF converter (version 2006.09.02).]
)
! LuaTeX error <\directlua >:1: unexpected symbol near '\'.
l.13 \directlua { tex.print(\value{footnote}}
                                              }
? 

\

Answer 1

\directlua { tex.print(\value{footnote}} }

there is a missing closing parenthesis ). However you can write:

\directlua { tex.print(\thefootnote)} 

at least for numeric footnotes

Answer 2

In ConTeXt, counters created by \definenumber or \definestructurecounter are accessible at the lua side using structure.counters.data table. That way, you do not have to do any conversions at the TeX level. You can use helper functions like structure.counteres.value to get the value of a counter. I don't know if any LaTeX package provides similar functionality for LaTeX counters.