Will indexing things that don't need to be make my scripts less optimized?

[DivineTempest (Tempest)]

Will indexing things that don’t need to be make my scripts less optimized and slower? such as something
local Head = Character:findFirstChild(“Head”)
in many multiple scripts.

[steven4547466 (Steven)]

Yes. FindFirstChild is slow relative to directly accessing it with Character.Head, the difference is FindFirstChild won’t cause your scripts to error if it’s missing. The docs say that FindFirstChild takes 20% longer than . and takes 8x longer than just saving a reference to it. Avoid many calls to FindFirstChild when possible, especially in loops (and even more so in scripts connected to the renderstep).

[Limited_Unique]

WaitForChild is typically the better alternative to FindFirstChild.

[NoParameters (Para)]

It really depends on what you’re trying to use :FindFirstChild() or :WaitForChild() on. If you’re working with server code and none of the objects were created from a client then replicated, you’re pretty safe to use . instead of :FindFirstChild() because you know the child of that object exists.

:WaitForChild(), for me at least, is mainly used on the client (especially when doing frontend programming >_>, very tedious) because you have to give the client time to have those Instances loaded in.

[DivineTempest (Tempest)]

Thanks thats what I needed to know.

@NoParameters

It really depends on what you’re trying to use :FindFirstChild() or :WaitForChild() on. If you’re working with server code and none of the objects were created from a client then replicated, you’re pretty safe to use . instead of :FindFirstChild() because you know the client of that object exists.

:WaitForChild(), for me at least, is mainly used on the client (especially when doing frontend programming >_>, very tedious) because you have to give the client time to have those Instances loaded in.