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The choice of a variable name should be mnemonic — that is, designed to indicate to the casual observer the intent of its use. One-character variable names should be avoided except for temporary "throwaway" variables. Common names for temporary variables are i, j, k, m, and n for integers; c, d, and e for characters. int i;
If a variable is only referenced by a single identifier, that identifier can simply be called the name of the variable; otherwise, we can speak of it as one of the names of the variable. For instance, in the previous example the identifier "total_count" is the name of the variable in question, and "r" is another name of the same variable.
A fundamental distinction in scope is what "part of a program" means. In languages with lexical scope (also called static scope), name resolution depends on the location in the source code and the lexical context (also called static context), which is defined by where the named variable or function is defined.
A basic example is in the argv argument to the main function in C (and C++), which is given in the prototype as char **argv—this is because the variable argv itself is a pointer to an array of strings (an array of arrays), so *argv is a pointer to the 0th string (by convention the name of the program), and **argv is the 0th character of the ...
An identifier I' (for variable X') masks an identifier I (for variable X) when two conditions are met I' has the same name as I; I' is defined in a scope which is a subset of the scope of I; The outer variable X is said to be shadowed by the inner variable X'. For example, the parameter "foo" shadows the local variable "foo" in this common pattern:
In computer programming, a reference is a value that enables a program to indirectly access a particular datum, such as a variable's value or a record, in the computer's memory or in some other storage device. The reference is said to refer to the datum, and accessing the datum is called dereferencing the reference. A reference is distinct from ...
There are several main ways to express a data value that doesn't change during program execution that are consistent across a wide variety of programming languages. One very basic way is by simply writing a literal number, character, or string into the program code, which is straightforward in C, C++, and similar languages.
In most of today's popular programming languages and operating systems, a computer program usually only has a single entry point.. In C, C++, D, Zig, Rust and Kotlin programs this is a function named main; in Java it is a static method named main (although the class must be specified at the invocation time), and in C# it is a static method named Main.