A simpler approach for saving from a script would be to just have SubEthaEdit
save the
document directly. For example, to save your file to the desktop, I'd do this:

tell application "SubEthaEdit" to save the front document in POSIX file
"/Users/mjb/Desktop/test.lua"

No idea if that would help with the zeros you mention, but I'd guess not --
looks more
like a file encoding issue. Try UTF-8 and see if the problem goes away.

--- In SubEthaEdit@yahoogroups.com, "Vaughan McAlley" <ockegheim@...> wrote:
>
> I've been happily coding with SubEtherEdit for years. I'm curious about the
> SubEther Text format, which I think would great for keeping track of changes
> over time.
>
> I want to be able to instantly save a plain text version of the file in a
> relevant place to compile or run. I wrote the following applescript (full
> source is at http://mcalley.net.au/see/SaveAsPlainText.zip )
>
> tell application "SubEthaEdit"
> set fileContents to plain text of the document of the front window
> end tell
>
> set commentMarker to "--" -- Lua comments
> set firstLine to first paragraph of fileContents
> set filePath to trim_line(firstLine, commentMarker, 0)
> my write_to_file(fileContents, filePath, false)
>
> ...the first line of the Lua file contains the path and filename I want to
> save to (commented):
>
> --Macintosh HD:test.lua
>
> The result ends up like this:
> http://mcalley.net.au/see/result.png
> ...with every data byte preceded by zero. Is there a fix for this, or a
> simpler way that I haven't been able to find?
>
> Thank you,
> Vaughan
>