title: Lua strings won't concatenate
body: <p>I am trying to concatenate a variable to make my output "prettier", however it seems to output as an empty string when concatenated with other string values.</p>
  
  <p>The output code excerpt looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>local name = ""
  
  local SendMessage = alien.User32.SendMessageA
  SendMessage:types{ret = "int", abi = "stdcall", "pointer", "int", "int", "string"}
  
  SendMessage(handle, LB_GETTEXT, index, name)
  
  print(type(name)) --To verify that it is a string type
  print(name) --Prints the name "Sample 1" perfectly fine
  print("Title: " .. name .. "\n") --Doesn't print the name variable "Sample 1"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Output:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/2pWCW.png" alt="Output"></p>
  
  <p>The <code>name</code> variable is set via <a href="http://alien.luaforge.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Alien for Lua</a> call to the <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms644950%28v=vs.85%29.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">WINAPI SendMessage function</a> from <code>User32.dll</code>.  I think this might be part of the issue, however as you can see above, the variable is set to type (Lua) "string" and prints fine when called by itself.  However whenever you concatenate it with anything, it acts like the empty string (or something similar).</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong>  I have also tried <code>tostring(name)</code> and <code>alien.tostring(name)</code>.  Neither of which fix the issue.</p>