Does reducing constant variable declarations improve performance?

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#1

Hi, I was working on a script and I was curious if this line of code

local nextPosition
	
	while mobHum.Health > 0 do
		nextPosition = "placeholder"
		local path = pathFindingService:CreatePath()
		task.wait()
	end

Would be better then this code in terms of performance:

while mobHum.Health > 0 do
		local nextPosition = "placeholder"
		local path = pathFindingService:CreatePath()
		task.wait()
	end
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#2

Declaring the variable shouldn’t affect performance at all.

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#3

I think it would, but only by a miniscule amount.

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#4

There indeed is a difference in the performance, but it is so small that you absolutely don’t need to care about it. But it is generally preffered to make variables completely private for a function, if the function is the only piece of code which stores or reads values from it.

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#5

It’s a tradeoff. By making the variable outside of the scope, you are possibly using up more memory, but you have better performance.

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#6

Oh wow, I didn’t think of scope having a impact on memory

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#7

Well, only sometimes. It might actually save memory to have it out of scope if you are using the variable elsewhere.

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#8 
local nextPosition
	
while mobHum.Health > 0 do
	nextPosition = "placeholder"
	local path = pathFindingService:CreatePath()
	task.wait()
end

while mobHum.Health > 0 do
	local nextPosition = "placeholder"
	local path = pathFindingService:CreatePath()
	task.wait()
end

(Im just so lazy to do the explanation sorry but if isnt working i try to figurate out)

1 Like