How To Assign a Value to a Variable in Python

What are variables? 

Remember that in math you did if x=2 then 2x+1 is 5. In programming, there is something called variables, and they act like x acting on the equation, but instead of having only numbers ‘stored’ by x, we can install different types of data.

And variables in programming basically refer to different memory locations in the computer, and when the python interpreter gets a variable, it stores the data in the memory, and store the memory locations in the variable, and when you use a variable you are giving the interpreter memory locations that it can use in order to use the values in the memory locations.

How do you use it? In python it is pretty straight forward to use variables, the basics are as follows:

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variable_a = 53 print variable_a #output: 53 variable_b= 'Mr Awesome!' print (variable_b) #output: Mr Awesome

You should have noticed that above statements, when we are stating an integer then we do not need to use apostrophes, while if you are stating a string (that is what is called), then you need to start and end it with an apostrophe, without the apostrophes it will not work.

A variable should have a name that is alphanumeric, with the exception of ‘_’, and variables names are case sensitive, here are some demonstrations of what will work and what will not work:

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my age = 20 # not gonna work, however my_age = 20 will work #(Incidentally, i am not 20 years old!) my*name='Mr. Awesome'; #not gonna work, however my2name='Mr. Awesome'; myCar='BMW'; mycar='Toyota'; print (myCar) # output: BMW print (mycar) # output: Toyota

There are also keywords that you cannot use as variables, here is a list of keywords as of python 3:

and       del       from      not       while
as           elif      global    or        with
assert    else      if        pass      yield
break     except    import    print
class     exec      in        raise
continue  finally   is        return
def       for       lambda    try

Sometimes as a programmer you will need to join two different strings into a single one, in programming this is called concatenation, this is can be done as simply as:

varA='I love';

varB=' Python';

# now in variable varC we concatenate it:

varC=varA+varB;

print(varC);

#output: I love Python




However, if a certain variable contains integer such as the example below:

varD=2;

varE=3;

varF=varD+varE;

print(varE);

#output: 5




Why? simply because you are adding two integers, if however, you want to get the result of getting “23″ then you are going to have to get it as a sting, and varF will have to be a string, this can be done by adding a quote containing nothing, like this:

varD=2;

varE=3;

varF=varD+varE+"";

print(varE);

#output:23




To get a better understanding of variables it's best for you to practice them and learn from your mistakes – you can’t learn everything from reading!