Globals vs. Locals

[Uli Kusterer <witness.of.teachtext@...>]

Hi,

 if I understood this correctly, the way variables work in Lua is  
that they are global by default, and you explicitly declare those  
local that you want to be thus. Is there any place where I can find  
information on why it was designed this way, which is pretty much the  
opposite of the major languages?

 So far I thought it was safer if variables are local by default, so  
code can't accidentally change another object's variables (e.g.  
during a recursive call).

Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
http://www.zathras.de