Many programs are far more complex than just printing a sentence or two on the screen. To be able to perform more complex operations and calculations we need a way to store values temporarily during the program execution. These named stored locations are called variables.

Data Types

Main article: Data Types

In C, every variable must have a type which specifies what kind of data it could hold. The type of variable determines how the variable is stored and what operations can be performed on it. For example, a variable of type int can store integers such as 2, -9, 83, and 5294. By contrast with float, which is capable of storing floating point values such as 3.4, 30, -943.234, and 2e6. C provides a wide variety of types in addition to an int and a float, including: char, short, and double.

Minimum Magnitudes

It is important to understand that the sizes of these objects are implementation-defined. That is, depending on the machine you use and the compiler used to compile the program, the actual range of values that each type can store can vary. The C Standard does impose a minimum magnitude for each value.

Naming Rules

Variables can be as short as a single character or as long as thirty. Variable names can be made up of uppercase and lowercase letters, digits, and underscores. All variables must not start with a digit. Variables may also not have the same name as a reserved keyword.

For example, the following are valid variable names:

x                  foo
x_y_z              BaR
_foo               bar45
_1                 baz
thisIsAReallyLongVariableName

The following, however, are not valid variable names:

2                  $apples
5foo               double