So, you've typed your first program, dissected it line by line, and now you're ready for anything. Well, today you're going to learn about variables and constants, nothing particularily difficult, so just sit back and enjoy!

What are Variables and Constants?

Yes, it's a very strange version of the original classic, but that's only if you read it literally. If I had said that "head" is just a constant representing "lamb", it would have made perfect sense. Never thought of it that way, eh? Well, better start thinking about it. Constants were created to make program code more readable by replacing meaningless numbers with a meaningful name. A very nifty feature!

Some more examples of Variables and Constants

One method we can use for explaining a variable is to use the analogy of a box. Imagine that a variable is actually a box carrying the value which it stores. Now, you can actually take the value out, and put in a new one. After that, you can look up the value in the box and do things with it. You could also copy the value into other boxes, or take the values from other boxes and put them in your box. Variables are very flexible. They can store values from almost any other source you specify.
But here's where the concept of data types come in. You see, just like in real life, boxes come in all shapes and sizes. So, some boxes can't store certain values beyond their limits. Ahh, you guessed there was a catch! The different data types will be introduced to you later. For now, however, let's just talk about constants first.

Constants can be compared to a look-up table, something you'll use to look up unknown terms. (This is similar to the use of the word 'software' in license agreements, if you ever read them.) When you come across this 'unknown term', you will have to look up this table and understand what it means. For instance, if you declare a constant 'Name' representing "Tan Chun Ghee", the sentence "I think Name is really great!" would translate to "I think Tan Chun Ghee is really great!" This would be the same with the sentence "Name is my idol!" which would translate to "Tan Chun Ghee is my idol!" As you can see, "Name" is explicitly replaced with the text that it represents.

How Variables and Constants are implemented in Pascal

Implementing Variables

  var
    Number, Value: integer;
    Text: string;
    TrueOrFalse: boolean;

Of course, those are not all the data types you can have in Pascal. In fact, you can even make your own data types, so there really isn't any limit! Variables can be any size you want them to be.

Implementing Constants

  const
    Pi = 3.14;
    Gravity = 9.8;
    Golden = 1.6;

Below is the example program listing for today. Open a new code window to type in the code. Ahh, the three famous bars!

1: program VariableMania;
2:
3:   const
4:     Interest = 2;
5:
6:   var
7:     Money, Debt: integer;
8:
9:   begin
10:    { This is a very sad story of a man and a bank. }
11:    { Moral: Never tell a story about a man and a bank. }
12:
13:    Debt := 100;
14:    Writeln('There was once a man who owned a bank $', Debt, '.');
15:
16:    Money := 99;
17:    Writeln('However, he only had $', Money, '.');
18:
19:    Writeln('After one year, an interest of ', Interest, '% was issued.');
20:    Debt := Debt + (Debt div 100 * Interest);
21:    Writeln('His debt increased by $', (Debt div 100 * Interest), '.');
22:    Writeln('Now, his debt was $', Debt, '.');
23:  end.

There was once a man who owned a bank $100.
However, he only had $99.
After one year, an interest of 2% was issued.
His debt increased by $2.
Now, his debt was $102.

Once again, let's have a line-by-line analysis of this program. It looks long, but inside it's simpler than you think!

• Line 4 - This is a declaration for the constant 'Interest'. Now, whenever the compiler sees 'Interest', it'll return this number instead.
• Line 7 - Here are the declarations of variables 'Money' and 'Debt'. Both are integers, which only allow them to store whole numbers, but as you'll see later, this arrangement makes the program much easier to read.
• Line 13 - This is where the program really starts. See the := sign? Whenever that sign is used, it means that the value to the left of the sign will now store the value to the right of the sign. So in this case, 'Debt' now stores the value 100.
• Line 14 - This line prints out a message that changes with the value of 'Debt'. If you inspect the line closer, you'll see that after the first string, there is a comma, the variable name, and another comma, followed by the next string. When this line gets printed, The value of the variable is printed onto the screen.
• Line 16 & 17 - These lines do exactly the same thing as lines 13 and 14, except that they print out 'Money' instead of 'Debt'.
• Line 19 - This line uses a constant to print out the sentence. The compiler replaces the word 'Interest' with the number 2. Once again, this uses the Writeln command to output the sentence.
• Line 20 - Here, a calculation is carried out at the right of the :=, and the value is stored into 'Debt'. What it does into to take the current value of 'Debt', add it to Debt divided by 100 times 2, and place the new value into 'Debt'. In this calculation, division is replaced by 'div', and multiplication is replaced by '*'. You'll see why later.
• Line 21 & 22 - These lines output the amount of interest and the new value for 'Debt'.

Remember the procedure to run programs in Day 1? Well, here's how it works: When you first ran the program, the output flashes by so quick that it's nothing but a flicker on your screen. When you select 'User Screen', or press Alt-F5, you are just simply seeing what the user would see after he exits the program.
Now, had fun writing that? You might notice that our mathematical operations seemed to have changed a bit. Well, the standard for the four mathematical operations are +, -, *, and, /, with the slash meaning division, but you may notice that in our program, the slash is replaced by the keyword 'div'. This is because we're dealing with integers here, and the / symbol only returns real numbers. So we calculate integers with the 'div' keyword instead. Look up the help for more details.

End of Day 3