I don't know why you're saying that variable are not slower than hash table.
I said that primarily on the basis of the benchmarks I'd done using only a small number of variables (in which case variables are approx. 25% faster than hash tables). Obviously if you have a large number of variables then that won't be true.
I really hope you can answer the question "how do you know variable are cached in memory ?" because this is interesting.
Simply because mIRC caches all of its script/settings files (hence the existence of the saveini command). I would hope it has an additional variable-specific in-memory structure beyond a simple cache of the variables file, however the performance I've seen tonight suggests otherwise.
