Re: Lua Basics: modules()?

[Tim Gogolin <tgogolin@...>]

local variables can be accessed more efficiently at runtime than  
named identifier lookups. Locals are found at runtime as an array  
access (by index), whereas table lookups are a hash table lookup. So  
this is probably just an attempt to make frequently used function  
calls execute a little faster.

-- Tim Gogolin

On Sep 12, 2005, at 2:23 PM, William Trenker wrote:

> > From studying various Lua modules I see that experienced Lua
> programmers usually set up a number of local variables that carry the
> value of standard library functions, like this:
>
> local assert, error, _G, loadstring, loadfile, _pcall, type, unpack,
> xpcall = assert, error, _G, loadstring, loadfile, pcall, type, unpack,
> xpcall
>
> What is the point of this?  On the surface it appears to be redundant.
>  But since it is often used by the experts I'm obviously missing
> something important.
>
> Thanks very much,
> Bill