There are two parts to declaring and initializing a local variable.
- specify the type and then name your variable
- provide the variable with an initial value
Assignmnet Operator
We use the assignment operator, =, to assign a value to a variable. The format that we follow is as follows:
type variableName = value;
All statements end in a ;.
Examples of Primitive Variables
| Description |
Creation of Variable |
| Vending Machine Price |
double itemPrice = 1.99; |
| Current Game Score |
int yourScore = 0; |
| Direction of a Robot |
int direction = 90; |
| Last Name Initial |
char intial = 'S'; |
| Whether a System is Ready or Not |
boolean isSystemReady = true; |
- Boolean variables can be assigned
true or false. The words true and false are Java keywords.
- Character variables are assigned a character literal. A literal is a fixed value. A character literal is enclosed in single quotes. For following are examples of character literals:
'7', 'A', 'b', '-'.
Your Turn
Let's try this out in the Java Playground.
Declare and initialize additional variables:
- Your middle initial
- The number of siblings you have
- Whether or not your are a freshman
- The weight of a piece of fruit
Modify the code above to declare and initialize other variables.
A Little About Storage
For primitive data (int, double, char, boolean), the value is stored in memory and the location is named with the variable name.
For non-primitive data, the data is stored in memory and either this location is named with the variable name or the variable name could contain a reference to the storage location where the data is being stored.
Resources
Next Learn Tutorial
Learn: Declaring String Variables