A variable is a named unit of data storage in memory.
A variable is a named data storage location in memory. Using variables a computer program can store numbers, text, binary-data, or a combination of any of these data types. They can be passed around in code between functions or even between applications.
Variables only accessible within a certain functions are termed "local variables". A "global variable", or one with indefinite scope, may be referred to anywhere in the program.
In some programming-languages, variables are constrained by a specific data type. Data types may vary across languages, but share many commonalities.
Primitive data types usually include:
- character, char, string, varchar (text)
- byte, short, int, tinyint, integer, long (whole numbers)
- double, decimal, float (real numbers)
- bit, boolean (true/false)
- date, datetime (date and time values)
- object (any value, including composite types)
- binary, raw, varbinary (that store stream of system data in binary form)
Composite data types consists of primitive types, and even other composite types.
# an example composite type, in pseudo code
Person(
'First name' : string,
'Surname' : string,
'Birthday' : date,
'CanProgram' : boolean
)
Some languages contain extra primitives: Tuples (Python), Linked Lists (Lisp), Hash Tables (Lisp, Perl, Python, Lua, D).
Some programming languages allow variables that store functions, that can be stored in data structures, passed as parameters to other functions, or returned as a result from other functions.
Memory allocation
The specifics of variable allocation and the representation of their values vary widely, both among programming languages and among implementations of a given language. Many language implementations allocate space for local variables, whose extent lasts for a single function call on the call stack, and whose memory is automatically reclaimed when the function returns. More generally, in name binding, the name of a variable is bound to the address of some particular block (contiguous sequence) of bytes in memory, and operations on the variable manipulate that block. Referencing is more common for variables whose values have large or unknown sizes when the code is compiled. Such variables reference the location of the value instead of storing the value itself, which is allocated from a pool of memory called the heap.
More information and reference material on Wikipedia.
