Re: parameter table

[Miles Bader <miles@...>]

Incidentally, a simplistic benchmark:

   $ time lua -e 'function f(a,b,c) return a+b+c end; sum = 0; for x = 1, 5000000 do sum = sum + f(x, x+1, x+2) end; print(sum)'
   37500022500000

   real    0m1.745s
   user    0m1.352s
   sys     0m0.000s

   $ time lua -e 'function f(t) return t.a+t.b+t.c end; sum = 0; for x = 1, 5000000 do sum = sum + f{a=x, b=x+1, c=x+2} end; print(sum)'
   37500022500000

   real    0m3.844s
   user    0m3.768s
   sys     0m0.004s

The simple argument version is about 3 times faster (there would probably be less
somewhat advantage for more complex functions).

Here's the "optional table" version, which is sort of in between:

   $ time lua -e 'function f(a,b,c) if type (a) == 'table' then b = a.b c = a.c a = a.a end return a+b+c end; sum = 0; for x = 1, 5000000 do sum = sum + f(x, x+1, x+2) end; print(sum)'
   37500022500000

   real    0m2.004s
   user    0m2.000s
   sys     0m0.004s

But with luajit, it's even more crazy (I guess since it's much easier to
optimize simple things like argument passing than table construction
etc...):

[note the loop count here is different than above]

   $ time luajit-2.0.0-beta2 -e 'function f(a,b,c) return a+b+c end; sum = 0; for x = 1, 50000000 do sum = sum + f(x, x+1, x+2) end; print(sum)'
   3.750000225e+15

   real    0m0.244s
   user    0m0.224s
   sys     0m0.004s

   $ time luajit-2.0.0-beta2 -e 'function f(t) return t.a+t.b+t.c end; sum = 0; for x = 1, 50000000 do sum = sum + f{a=x, b=x+1, c=x+2} end; print(sum)'3.750000225e+15

   real    0m13.135s
   user    0m12.989s
   sys     0m0.000s

The simple argument version is almost 60 times faster!

With luajit, there's apparently little overhead from the "optional
table" code:

   $ time luajit-2.0.0-beta2 -e 'function f(a,b,c) if type (a) == 'table' then b = a.b c = a.c a = a.a end return a+b+c end; sum = 0; for x = 1, 50000000 do sum = sum + f(x, x+1, x+2) end; print(sum)'
   3.750000225e+15

   real    0m0.238s
   user    0m0.228s
   sys     0m0.000s

-Miles

-- 
Innards, n. pl. The stomach, heart, soul, and other bowels.