variable

Objectives

1. Define a variable.

2. Create and reassign variables.

3. Define pass-by-value as it relates to variables.

Video

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This video is meant as optional supplemental material to augment the written curriculum. If you feel you already understand variables, you are welcome to skip the video and continue forward. Feel free to come back here if you ever want a review.

If you would like to code along you can use: repl.it.

Variables in Ruby

Let's dive right in:

first_number = 7
second_number = 14

sum = first_number + second_number

puts sum

The code above will print '21'.

current_president = "Barack Obama"
puts "In 2016, the president was #{current_president}."

This code will print In 2016, the president was Barack Obama..

Note: The syntax of #{current_president} simply injects the value of the variable current_president into the string. This is called Interpolation and we'll cover it later -- in this case, you can think of it as "In 2016, the president was " + current_president + "." where you are simply adding together multiple strings.

first_number, second_number, sum, and current_president are all variables. Much like in math, variables are words or characters that hold values. In algebra, however, variables are only placeholders for numbers. In Ruby, a variable can point to almost any type of value including numbers, strings, arrays, and hashes.

What is a Variable

As the examples above show, variables allow us to store information. We tell our computer to set aside some space to hold that information so we can retrieve it later. A variable is the location where the information resides, when we need it we know just where to look.

A Variable has a Name

i
result
user1
brkfstCereal
all_words_in_the_dictionary
CountryOfOrigin
FIRST_NAME
age
longest_word

These would all be valid variable names in Ruby. They would not all be good variable names. There is strong convention among Rubyists to use what is known as snake case this_is_an_example_of_snake_case words are separated by underscores. This is opposed to camel case thisIsAnExampleOfCamelCase where upcased characters indicate word breaks.

Variable names should start with a lowercase letter. A variable that begins with an uppercase letter is known as a constant and has different characteristics.

There are also some rules that mark invalid variable names:

# X Invalid X
1st_place
end
danny's_age   

A Ruby variable cannot start with a number, be a Ruby reserved word, or have punctuation or space characters.

A Variable has a Value

A variable's name is like a label on a container. Its value is what is stored inside that container. The name points to the value. Above, current_president holds onto the value "Barack Obama" and first_number has the value of the number 7. As we will see, the value of a variable can change even when its name stays the same.

A Variable has a Type

A variable's type is the type of the value it holds. Ruby is what is known as a dynamically typed language. That means the value of a variable can change its type and does not need to be explicitly and permanently defined. There is nothing stopping you from changing the value of sum, which now is the number 21, to the string "whatever I want".

It is also a strongly typed language. This means a variable will never be automatically coerced to another type without you explicitly changing the type. Adding two numbers will return a number, 2 + 2 returns 4; adding two strings will return a string, "2" + "2" returns "22"; adding a number and a string will raise an error, 2 + "2" raises a TypeError.

When you are building larger programs it is important to have in mind the type of the value that a variable refers to.

Creating Variables

Variables are assigned values using = ("equal sign"), called the assignment operator.

current_president = "Barack Obama"
puts "In 2016, the president was #{current_president}."

Reassigning Variables

Now the variable current_president is equal to the string Barack Obama. Let's say somehow Stephen Colbert got elected as president in the 2016 election. To update current_president, you would just reassign the variable much in the same way that you first defined it:

current_president = "Barack Obama"
puts "In 2016, the president was #{current_president}."

current_president = "Stephen Colbert"
puts "Now, it being the year 2017, the president is #{current_president}."

This will print out:

In 2016, the president was Barack Obama.
Now, it being the year 2017, the president is Stephen Colbert.

Variable Example

Within this repository is a file named variables.rb with some examples you can read and play with. Download the Source Files for this lesson to see how it behaves.

'This is data, it is a string. Strings start and end with  " '

"Part of being data, or a string, is that ruby doesn't interpret it."

puts 1+1
puts "1+1"

example = "The word 'example' is equal to this sentence, it's a named variable."

puts example
puts example
puts example

puts "variables are any previously undefined word that"
puts "starts with a lowercase letter."

Running this file will print:

2
1+1
The word 'example' is equal to this sentence, it's a named variable.
The word 'example' is equal to this sentence, it's a named variable.
The word 'example' is equal to this sentence, it's a named variable.
variables are any previously undefined word that
starts with a lowercase letter.

Bonus: 'Pass-By-Value'

We have seen that the variable itself, the location where information is stored, is distinct from the value stored at that location. Let's try something out to demonstrate this. We'll first declare a new variable with an original value, then do something to change that value, and finally we'll take a peek at our variable again.

# Open up IRB and follow along
sound = "squeak"

# We can peek at the value of sound by typing its name
sound
# => "squeak"

sound.upcase
# => "SQUEAK"

Ok, the moment of suspense has arrived! Now if we type sound again what do you think its value will be?

...

...

Hmmm... sound is still pointing to the original lowercased value. What does this tell us? When upcase did its thing to the variable, what MUST sound have handed over to upcase for us to see this result?

Only it's value. In fact it must have made a copy of that value that upcase could operate on while still holding onto the original unaltered value. If this process did not happen the value 'squeak' wouldn't exist for us to look up and we'd only be able to see 'SQUEAK'.

This is what we mean by pass-by-value. A variable makes a copy of the value it holds and passes the copy over to something else that alters or changes it. The alternative process is known as pass-by-reference. Here, changes to a variable would alter what is stored in the actual location it refers to. After the process was complete the variable would be holding a new and different value.

Resources

• ZetCode Ruby Variables
• Wikibooks: Ruby Programming/Syntax/Variables and Constants

View About Variable Assignment on Learn.co and start learning to code for free.