[Tesser]

*EDIT* I've now got it officially working! I *think* the problem was the location of the concatenation, but I changed a lot and am not sure. You can paste this full item code into an Advanced Item > Script widget in GHI and it will work (type /binary to speak)

It allows you to both speak and understand binary.

I don't think the runtime of lua was the problem, after all that. Thanks for looking it over!

function toBits(num,bits)
-- function toBits(bits)
    -- returns a table of bits, most significant first.
    bits = bits or select(2,math.frexp(num))
    local t={} -- will contain the bits        
    for b=bits,1,-1 do
        t[b]=math.fmod(num,2)
        num=(num-t[b])/2
    end
    return t
end


local binString = ""

function cmdSay(msg)
    -- local msg =  "how crazy can we get?!`1234567890~!@#$%^&*(" 
    local array1 = {}
    binString = ""
    
    for ltr in msg:gmatch(".") do table.insert(array1, ltr) end 
    
    for k,v in pairs(array1) do
        local binNum 
        if v == " " then 
            binNum = " "
        else
            binNum = table.concat(toBits(string.byte(v)))
        end
        binString = binString .. binNum
    end
    GHI_Say("[Binary]: "..binString)
end



local binary = GHI_SlashCmd("binary")

binary.SetDefaultFunc(function(x)    
        cmdSay(x)    
    end
)




function humanize(message)
    local word_table = {}
    local array2 = {}
    local array3 = {}
    local strip = 0
    for wurd in message:gmatch("%S+") do if strip>0 then table.insert(array3, wurd) else end strip = strip + 1 end 
    
    for k,v in pairs(array3) do
        -- print('beg of pairs', k, v)
        local incr = 1
        local array4 = {}
        local tByte = ""
        local altr = ""
        local actual_word = ""
        
        for w in string.gmatch(v, ".") do  
            tByte = tByte .. w
            local sum = 0
            if incr%7==0 then
                
                array4[incr/7] = tByte
                local bin = string.reverse(array4[incr/7])
                for i = 1, string.len(bin) do
                    num = string.sub(bin, i,i) == "1" and 1 or 0
                    sum = sum + num * math.pow(2, i-1)
                end
                tByte=""
                altr = string.char(sum)
                actual_word = actual_word .. altr
            end
            incr = incr + 1
        end
        word_table[k] = actual_word
        -- print('end of pairs', k, v)
        
    end
    local sentence = ""
    for ke,va in pairs(word_table) do   
            -- print(ke, va)
            sentence = sentence .. " " .. va

        end
        print(sentence)
end


if not binbrewFrame then
    binbrewFrame = CreateFrame("Frame");
end
binbrewFrame:RegisterEvent("CHAT_MSG_SAY");



local binBrewFunc = function (self, event, ...)
    local message, sender, language, channelString, target, flags, unknown, channelNumber, channelName, unknown, counter = ...  
    local msgSearch = string.find(message, "[bB]inary");

   -- if GHI_CountBuffs("Binary") > 0 then
        if msgSearch ~= nil then
            humanize(message)
        end
   -- end

end

binbrewFrame:SetScript("OnEvent", binBrewFunc);