5.3. Types of variables. Declarations.

As opposed to the literals, types of variables must be specified in declarations.

A declaration of a variable (constant) defines its name, type and possibly some other properties which may be important if the variable (constant) is a field of a class.

Simplified syntax of a declaration may be depicted as follows:

Type_name variable_name;

For example, int a; // declaration of an integer variable a char c; // declaration of a variable which stores Unicode characters double price; // declaration of a variable of the type double, named price The declaration of a variable may specify its initial value.

Initialization of a variable means setting its initial value in the declaration.

The syntax of the declaration with initialization is:

type_name variable_name = expression;

For example: int a = 3; is an abbreviated form of: int a; a = 3; In this case the initializing expression was a literal. In general it may be an arbitrary expression (in particular a method invocation). For example: int a = 3; int b = a + 1; // declaration of variable b and setting its value to 4 Note, that the use of the variable a in the initializer expression of the variable b is possible, because the declaration of the variable a appears before its first use in the initializer expression. Constants are declared with the keyword final.

The value of a constant can be set only once and it cannot be modified later.

To declare a constant we write:

final type_name constant_name [ = expression ];

Initialization (given in square braces) is optional, but it is important to set the value of the constant only once. However, constants are mostly initialized in the declarations. For example: final int NUM = 55; final double PI_SMALL = 3.14; final char C; ... C = 'c'; Declarations of variables and constants which refer to objects are noted analogously. If the type of the variable x is int we write: int x; Similarly, if s is the name of the variable referencing to an object of the class String, we write: String s; Button b;

Good programming style rules recommend putting declarations one per single line together with a comment describing the meaning of the variable, especially when its application is not clear from its name.

It is possible to declare a number of variables of the same type in a single declaration by specifying them (together with possible initializers) on the list separated with commas. For example: int num = 1, count, ff = 10; Button b1, b2, b3; A programmer must remember to declare all variables in a program.

Declarations must precede the use of variables and constants in the instructions of a program. It does not mean however, that declarations must precede all the instructions of a program. On the contrary: variables and constants are usually declared close to the place of their first use, which makes the source code clearer.

Consider an example similar to the program for calculating the price of a computer from our initial lectures:

public class CompPrice {

public static void main(String[] args) {

int cProc = 700; // CPU price

int cPly = 500; // mainboard price

int cPam = 300; // prices of other components ...

int cDysk = 400;

int cInn = 500;

final double VAT = 1.22; // VAT tax

// calculate price of the computer without a monitor

double cKomp = (cProc + cPly + cPam + cDysk + cInn) * VAT;

System.out.println("The price of the computer without a monitor is :");

System.out.println(cKomp);

int cMon = 1100; // monitor price net

cKomp = cKomp + cMon * VAT; // price of the computer with monitor

System.out.println("The price of the computer with the monitor is:");

System.out.println(cKomp);

}

}

Note that lack of the keyword int before the variable cMon makes it undeclared.

cMon = 1100; // monitor price net

cKomp = cKomp + cMon * VAT; // price of the computer with monitor

The compiler detects this error and prints the message:

CompPrice.java:19: cannot resolve symbol symbol : variable cMon location: class CompPrice cMon = 1100; // monitor price net ^ CompPrice.java:20: cannot resolve symbol symbol : variable cMon location: class CompPrice cKomp = cKomp + cMon * VAT; // price of the computer with monitor ^ 2 errors

The message "cannot resolve symbol" is encountered quite frequently. Usually it means that we are using some name which a compiler cannot identify (most often it is the use of an undeclared variable). A typical source of such errors are misspelled names (lowercase vs. uppercase letters).

Java differentiates lowercase and uppercase letters in names of variables, constants, methods and classes.