FindGlobals
This is a Lua script that checks your .lua files for excess and/or involuntary global variable access.
It needs a Lua interpreter to run; I recommend Cogwheel's WoW Lua.
THIS IS NOT AN ADDON
PRO'S DIGEST
Yes, it's basically a "Luac | grep ?ETGLOBAL", but with some controls.
In PARTICULAR, it differentiates between set/get global access inside and outside of functions.
It also lets you list globals that you are ok with in comment lines like "--
GLOBALS: blah, bleh, bluh".
So, it's a little more run-every-time-you-save-before-reloadui friendly. I've been using it for a bit and thought i'd share.
What do I need to know about globals for?
To optimize an addon's performance, you want to make access to commonly-used functions "local" access rather than global namespace lookups. This most definitely includes functions like type, next, pairs, select that maybe you didn't even realize were functions.
Some globals you may be okay with being global accesses (or in fact NEED them to because they can be hooked or changed), for those you have two options:
- Add one or more "
--
GLOBALS: SomeFunc, SomeOtherFunc, SomeGlobalVariable" lines to the source file
or - Put a "local _G=_G" at the top of the file, and then access them through _G.SomeFunc, etc. This is actually somewhat faster than accessing them directly, believe it or not. (Direct global access involves looking up the global variable table first!)
Then, and this is possibly the biggest boon of the script, there is finding the odd miss-spelled variable name. Or the code snippet that you copy&pasted from one function to another but forgot to rename the variables. This rocks.
How to run
Put globals.lua in some directory. Maybe along with your Lua interpreter. Then:
luac -l -p MyFile.lua | lua globals.lua MyFile.lua
or, more likely:
c:\path\to\luac -l -p MyFile.lua | c:\path\to\lua c:\path\to\globals.lua MyFile.lua
Additionally
... since we're running Luac on the file, it is also checked for syntax errors.
I heartily recommend adding this as a "Tool" in your text editor of choice and binding it to a key that you can mash it to save & test before reloading your UI.
Oh and by the way, if you feel that this deserves a % of the curse points that go to libraries that you use, I'd appreciate a tools-used line in your .pkgmeta file :-)
For VS Code, you'll want to create the following task in your project's workspace. You can then run it by pressing Ctrl + Shift + B, and the output will be displayed in VS Code's console.
Note: I highly recommend either putting the lua-wow folder into a path without spaces, or adding the lua-wow folder to your system's PATH variable and then removing the paths from the task's command.
I use Sublime Text 2, and figured I'd share the build thing I set up for each file here, for users that also use this delightful editor:
Create a new build system with this in it, save, and press CTRL+B to execute
This is written in a json constructor so, you have to escape the backslashes in the path with a second backslash (
\\
)I stored globals.lua alongside a batch file with the name 'findglobals.bat' in "My Documents\Subversion" where I keep all the addons I'm working on.
The batch file is simple with just two lines
Sublime Text will run this batch file and pipe all of the output from it into Sublime's console, so you can read it really easily in the file you're working on.
Of course, just modify the paths in each of the files to suit your particular needs.
For those running Python 3.x, I've written a small script to run the find globals script and display a "human-friendly" report.
http://www.curseforge.com/paste/6180/
Sample output:
@Morsker
I love the nppExec ability how did i not know about this! Here is my command when using F6:
C:\lua-wow\global.bat "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)"
That NppExec is really nice; I was able to get it to color lines and enable clicking on them to jump to the line in the file:
http://oi47.tinypic.com/2yn2c01.jpg
http://oi46.tinypic.com/2ibm0px.jpg
Also if anyone uses my batch file with NppExec, take out the last line with the pause.
@Morsker I heartily recommend installing NppExec for this. It shows you the results in a pane inside NotePad
++
instead of a cmd window.Here's an NppExec script that works using Morsker's findglobals.bat
NPP_SAVE CD $(CURRENT_DIRECTORY) c:\path\to\findglobals.bat $(FILE_NAME)
Something similar works with
Notepad++
.1. I renamed the file FindGlobals.lua and put it in the WoW Interface\ folder
2. I made FindGlobals.bat in the same folder:
3. Press F5 for "Run" and give it this:
And the Run interface lets you save a keybind to it.
I've got this working in WoW-SciTE to print out in the output window. First I put Cogwheel's WoW Lua interpreter and globals.lua into a folder named lua-wow on my C drive. Then in that folder I created a run.bat file with this in it.
Then in SciTE. I opened lua.properties and added this line
Now in SciTE. I can hit F7 and quickly see what's global in the output window.
Thanks for the great tool mikk!