Variables and data types
What is a variable ?¶
- Variable is a name which is used as a pointer to data that is stored on computer memory.
- In python, variables are called as names.
message = "Hello World"
print(message)
# Output: Hello World
my_var = "Hi"
print(my_var)
# Output: Hi
print(your_var)
# Output:
# NameError: name 'your_var' is not defined
- In above python program we have stored the message "Hello World" in the variable
message
. - Actually it is stored in computer memory and variable
message
is a pointer to the data "Hello World". - In above program when we print "
your_var
" we got an error. - Because the the variable is not defined.
- Instead of naming the variable as "
message
" we can use anything like "my_var
", "your_var
", etc. - But, it's not a good practice to give random names. We should follow some rule to name variables in python.
Note: Use variable/names only if you use it more than once
How to name a Variable?¶
- variable name should not contain a space
- variable name should starts with a letter or an underscore(_)
- special symbols (
~
,!
,@
,#
,$
, etc.) are not allowed in variable name. - variable should be short and meaningful as per the data stored in variable.
- If we want to use multiple words in a variable we can use underscore(
_
) to separate the words. Example variables "student_name
", "account_number
", "phone_num1
", "phone_num2
", etc. - Python is case sensitive language so, it treats the lowercase letters and upper case letters differently. For example variable "
Student
" is different from the variable "student
". - We should not use python reserved variables/names as varibles though we are allowed to use it.
- It is better practice to use lowercase letters instead of uppercase letters.
What is a datatype in python ?¶
- Datatype is a classification of data which tells the computer that how the programer wants to use the data. For example the data "hello" is different from the data 255.
-
Data "hello" is of type
string
and 255 is of typeint
in python. -
In python, we can classify the data types into two.
- Immutable data types
- Mutable data types
Immutable data types¶
Immutable data type is defined as once we declare the data of a datatype then it will not allow us to modify it. The following data types are immutable data types in python.
-
bool
- Boolean data typeis_number = True is_valid = False
-
int
- Integer data typenum1 = 100 num2 = 200
-
float
- Float data typenum1 = 100.0 num2 = 220.5
-
str
- String data typefirst_name = "Anji" last_name = "B"
-
tuple
- Tuple data typenumbers = (1,2,3,4,5)
-
frozenset
- Immutable set data typeunique_numbers = frozenset(1,2,3,4,5)
Mutable data types¶
Mutable data typeis defined as it is a data type in which we can modify the data whenever we want. It's simply opposite to the immutable data type. The following data types are mutable data types in python.
-
list
- List data type or Array data typedata = ["Apple", 123.55, False]
-
set
- Set data typenumbers_set = {1,2,3,4,5}
-
dict
- Dictionary data type [i.e key value map]days = {"Sun": 1, "Mon": 2, "Tues": 3}
-
In python we can also define our own data types as well.
- The above mentioned data types are some of the built-in data types provided by the python.