[luatex] Bumbling luatex newbie gets nowhere

[Michael Talbot-Wilson]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012, Robin Fairbairns wrote:

> of the form "my latex doesn't have _this_ package" or "my pdftex doesn't
> do _this_" (surprisingly frequyent).  nothing so obvious as allowing
> people to self-install...  i'll be getting that going some time next
> month, in time for the new academical year.

Person self-installed.  Granted he doesn't know what he's doing, is
bumbling along, but...

my brand new Eplain Luatex (per luatex.fmt as below) doesn't do
_this_ ...  Step one goes nowhere.  Any ideas, anyone?

$ luatex test-modutils-plain.tex
This is LuaTeX, Version beta-0.70.1-2012071504
(./test-modutils-plain.tex
(/usr/local/libexec/teTeX/share/texmf-local/tex/generic/luatex/luatexbase-modut
ils.sty
Package: luatexbase-modutils 2010/10/10 v0.3 Module utilities for
LuaTeX
(/usr/local/libexec/teTeX/share/texmf-local/tex/generic/luatex/ifluatex.sty)
(/usr/local/libexec/teTeX/share/texmf-local/tex/generic/luatex/luatexbase-loade
r.sty
Package: luatexbase-loader 2010/10/10 v0.3 Lua module loader for
LuaTeX
(/usr/local/libexec/teTeX/share/texmf-local/tex/generic/luatex/ifluatex.sty)
(/usr/local/libexec/teTeX/share/texmf-local/tex/generic/luatex/luatexbase-compa
t.sty
Package: luatexbase-compat 2010/10/10 v0.3 Compatibility tools for
LuaTeX
(/usr/local/libexec/teTeX/share/texmf-local/tex/generic/luatex/ifluatex.sty)
! Missing number, treated as zero.
<to be read again>
                    }
l.90 \the\toks0

?

I tried that after doing this, because the freshly compiled luatex
seemed to need a fmt file:

$ luatex -ini
This is LuaTeX, Version beta-0.70.1-2012071504  (INITEX)
**\catcode `\{=1
*\catcode `\}=2
*\directlua { tex.enableprimitives('',tex.extraprimitives()) }
*\input ./plain.tex
*\input ifluatex.sty
*\input ./eplain.tex
*\dump