Long chains of objects (aka tables)

["Thiago L." <fakedme@...>]

So I did some benchmarking: 
https://gist.github.com/SoniEx2/4b1d9d8e6427cf5a1439

It seems like pcall is almost the best way to do Groovy's ?. stuff in 
Lua: http://groovy.codehaus.org/Null+Object+Pattern
(let me quote it)
"with the |?.| operator, an expression like |p?.job?.salary| will be 
equal to null if |salary| is equal to null, or if |job| is equal to null 
or if |p| is equal to null. You don't need to code a complex nested |if 
... then ... else| to avoid a |NullPointerException|."
(actually pcall is more like catching a NullPointerException but w/e)

Now here's what I'm curious about: how fast would indexing long chains 
be if Lua had the ?. operator? (so that (nil)?.whatever == nil and 
someObject?.whatever == someObject.whatever)

(Yes that does mean someone'll have to patch Lua to support ?., and yes 
they'll have to run all the stuff I did on my benchmark, and yes my 
benchmark seems to cause a glitch...)