Epic Scripting.  Performance.

Coding for performance in any language always requires rethinking even the most basic assumptions.

  Numerical Assumptions and the String Trap.

One assumption a coder often makes is that mathematical operations are faster
than operations on other data types.  This is untrue in epic because all data
is passed back and forth between the major parts as character strings.  When a
mathematical operation is performed, the input is taken as a numerical value of
a string, and the output is printed back to a string.  This has effects on
performance and on the accuracy of the math.

  Data Storage.

Epics variable implementations are based on an alist.  Adding and removing a
variable involves moving every variable after it aside.  Performance will draw
to a standstill as the number of variables increases unless care is taken to
address this.

The best way to deal with this is for epic to stop using alists.  :-)  This is
still in the works at this point.

When dealing with variables with fixed names that are frequently added and
removed, it's usually best to assign an empty value to them rather than
deleting them, since changing a variable doesn't have this performance impact.