local <name_1> <name_2> <name_3>Defining a local variable does two things.
- It tells the XPE parser that the symbol should be treated as a variable name (even if it has already been defined as a function name elsewhere) for the scope of the function in which the local has been defined
- It causes XPE to allocate and release temporary space for the variable when the function that uses it is invoked. This protects the contents of the variable which may be in use in some section of the code when the function is invoked.
Local variables are not accessable from any other function unless they are explicitly passed to a called function.