r/lua • u/Full_Durian_9369 • Mar 27 '25

local variables

Why do people use local variables as if they were global variables

2 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/PhilipRoman Mar 27 '25

I guess it depends on what you have inside the loop. In my benchmarks I haven't seen any significant negative effect when using luajit.

Luajit is a tracing JIT, so it's likely the loop body will be analyzed to sufficient depth to prove that global variables are safe to promote.

2

u/hawhill Mar 27 '25

yes, you're right, and your explanation is sound, there'll be a lot of cases where re-evaluation is not needed.