Does anybody have any info on what this command line parameter is? I tried a little bit of experimentation, but I didn't see anything different. The API functions are always global, otherwise how would pico-8 even work? What is this and how is it useful for debugging?

https://www.lexaloffle.com/dl/docs/pico-8_manual.html#Commandline_parameters

-global_api n           1 to leave api functions in global scope (useful for debugging)

it’s an old optimization to put all pico8 functions as lua ‘locals’ (like pset,spr…)

could have broken some carts hence the flag

comes from this:

[tweet ]

the key is that local here means that the variables are local to the scope of the whole cart, not to one function or block.

Oh that is a cool optimization! I guess that is why _G is nil. But wait, all the locals are still in _ENV table, right? I wonder if that table typically does not get indexed in our code and that’s why this optimization works.

yes, the built-in functions are not removed from _ENV, this trick is about adding them to the local (cart) scope to get a little faster access.