[ANSWERED] A Question about Functions and Using Their Parameters

[sphyrth]

I've been thinking about the way I use variables in functions. Which is more efficient?
#1

Code: Select all

function fff(foo)
   -- use foo directly
   local something = foo + 3
end

#2

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function fff(foo)
  -- use a local variable for it
  local var = foo
  local something = var + 3
end

This may have a case-to-case basis, but my question focused is on efficiency (or maybe it's still negligible even for huge projects. I'll accept the argument about good programming practice. I'll also accept concerns about pass-by-value and pass-by-reference.

[MrFariator]

In a case like this I think the main concern is how luajit handles it. Any performance gain or penalty is going to be pretty minuscule, I wager.

I'll also accept concerns about pass-by-value and pass-by-reference.

If foo is a table, assigning it into a variable won't change anything. You're still handling a reference, not a copy.

[ivan]

"foo" is already local so there would be no difference.
In fact the second version might be very slightly slower because it allocates more stack space.
As MrFariator mentioned, tables are always references and you can never pass a table as a value.

[pgimeno]

To add to what has already been said, you can examine the bytecode listing to determine that. Here's this test case's bytecode:

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$ luajit -b -l code.lua 
-- BYTECODE -- code.lua:1-4
0001    ADDVN    1   0   0  ; 3
0002    RET0     0   1

-- BYTECODE -- code.lua:6-10
0001    MOV      1   0
0002    ADDVN    2   1   0  ; 3
0003    RET0     0   1

Also, according to my understanding of how the JIT works, if that fragment gets compiled, I expect it won't make any difference in the compiled result whatsoever, as the extra assignment will be optimized out.