Meaning of VARIABLE in English
< programming > A named memory location in which a program can store intermediate results and from which it can read it them. Each programming language has different rules about how variables can be named, typed, and used. Typically, a value is "assigned" to a variable in an assignment statement. The value is obtained by evaluating an expression and then stored in the variable. For example, the assignment
x = y + 1
means "add one to y and store the result in x". This may look like a mathematical equation but the mathematical equality is only true in the program until the value of x or y changes. Furthermore, statements like
x = x + 1
are common. This means "add one to x", which only makes sense as a state changing operation, not as a mathematical equality.
The simplest form of variable corresponds to a single- word of memory or a CPU register and an assignment to a load or store machine code operation.
A variable is usually defined to have a type , which never changes, and which defines the set of values the variable can hold. A type may specify a single ("atomic") value or a collection ("aggregate") of values of the same or different types. A common aggregate type is the array - a set of values, one of which can be selected by supplying a numerical index .
Languages may be untyped , weakly typed , strongly typed , or some combination. Object-oriented programming languages extend this to object types or classes .
A variable's scope is the region of the program source within which it represents a certain thing. Scoping rules are also highly language dependent but most serious languages support both local and global variables.
In a functional programming language, a variable's value never changes and change of state is handled as recursion over lists of values.
FOLDOC computer English dictionary. Английский словарь по компьютерам FOLDOC. 2012