Variables
As a programmer, you will frequently want your program to "remember" a value. For example, if your program requests a value from the user, or if it calculates a value, you will want to remember it somewhere so you can use it later. The way your program remembers things is by using variables. For example:
int b;
This line says, "I want to create a space called b that is able to hold one integer value." A variable has a name (in this case, b) and a type (in this case, int, an integer). You can store a value in b by saying something like:
Advertisement
b = 5;
You can use the value in b by saying something like:
printf("%d", b);
In C, there are several standard types for variables:
- int - integer (whole number) values
- float - floating point values
- char - single character values (such as "m" or "Z")
We will see examples of these other types as we go along.