Editing Module:Timing/doc (section)

=== Testing with arguments ===
The test call can take additional arguments. It will pass those on unaltered to the function under test. Most important, they are ''not'' cloned, that is they are passed on as is, and therefore if the function under test alters them then errors will accumulate. This can happen for the types ''function'', ''table'', ''userdata'' and ''thread''. We don't use ''userdata'' and ''thread'' on Wikipedia. That leaves ''nil'', ''boolean'', ''number'' and ''string'' as passed by value and safe against changes.

Strings are really pass by reference, but they are immutable and has copy on write.

A common example on how to pass in an argument is how to do this for the current frame
<syntaxhighlight lang="lua">
=require 'Module:Timing'(p.hello, mw.getCurrentFrame())
</syntaxhighlight>

This produce the following output

<pre>
=require 'Module:Timing'(p.hello, mw.getCurrentFrame())
Each call was running for about 3.0e-09 seconds.
	Mean runtime for each set was 3.0e-07 seconds,
	with standard deviation of 2.0e-07 seconds,
	minimum 4.8e-06, maximum 5.2e-06.
	Total time spent was about 1.2e-04 seconds.
Relative load is estimated to 1.1.
</pre>

Using arguments like this does not impose very much additional load, and most of it can be factored out.