Variables

Variables are place holders for inforamtion, these can change value as the program runs. If you are familiar with other programming languages you may expect to define a varable to a data type. This is not required in python. Python automatically assigns a datatype to a varaible based on what is being stored.

To create a variable we just need to come up with a meaning full name. Python requires some basic formatting rules, variables need to start with with a letter though can contain numbers, they cannot contain spaces. Note variables are case sensitive.

PEP 8 underscores are typically used between words in variables in python. For example a variable for a welcome message could be defined in the following way.

welcome_message = "Welcome to my site about python"

If we want to change this message we can use redefine it contents.


welcome_message = "Welcome to my site about python"

# update welcome message

welcome_message = "Welcome to my site about Python and Java"

print (welcome_message)

or pages views could be defined :

page_views = 12

This allows us to operate on the variable.


page_views = 12

# Increase the page view due to new visitor
page_views += 1

print (page_views)

This returns the value "13".

Now you have an understanding of variables lets look at datatypes




Related Sections

Python - Learn the python from the basics up. This fast track example code course will get you creating powerful python programs in no time.
Tkinter - Learn the key features of the tkinter to allow you to create user interfaces for your python programs.


Related Pages

Pickle - The pickle library allows a program to save data in a binary file.
Python - List Comprehension - Create powerful list comprehension expressions.
Python - Generators - Learn about generator statements.
Python - Data types - The learn about the key datatypes in the python language.
Tkinter - Combo Box - This is a short example showing how to use combo boxes in a GUI.
Tkinter - Radio Buttons - A short example of how to create a GUI with radio buttons.
Tkinter - Canvas - Canvas allows for a range of shapes to be plotted, such as circles, squares, lines