better? up to you man ;p don't let these highly negligible differences in processing time influence your decision. use whatever makes most sense to you
!set %var value is technically the quickest way to assign a value to a previously declared local variable, but i certainly wouldn't get into the habit of using it just for that. the ! looks a bit weird, and glancing over the code later (and having forgotten that the variable was already declared) i might wonder why i'm setting that variable globally, when im not
i suppose personally i'd use %var = value since i find it cleanest :p
