Variables

Why are we discussing variables? And what is a variable? With Visual Basic, and most programming languages, what you are doing is storing things in the computer's memory, and manipulating this store. If you want to add two numbers together, you put the numbers into storage areas and "tell" Visual Basic to add them up. But you can't do this without variables – at least not without seeing the numbers beforehand. So a variable is a storage area of the computer's memory. Think of it like this: a variable is an empty cardboard box. Now, imagine you have a very large room, and in this room you have a whole lot of empty cardboard boxes. Each empty cardboard box is a single variable. To add two numbers together, write the first number on a piece of paper and put the piece of paper into an empty box. Write the second number on a piece of paper and put this second piece of paper in a different cardboard box. Now, out of all your thousands of empty cardboard boxes two of them contain pieces of paper with numbers on them. To help you remember which of the thousands of boxes hold your numbers, put a sticky label on each of the two boxes. Write "number1" on the first sticky label, and "number2" on the second label. What have we just done? Well, we've created a large memory area (the room and all of the cardboard boxes), and we've set up two of the boxes to hold our numbers (two variables). We've also given each of these variables a name (the sticky labels) so that we can remember where they are. Now examine this: Dim number1 As Integer Dim number2 As Integer ** number1 = 3 number2 = 5 ** That's code from Visual Basic Net. It's VB's way of setting up (or declaring) variables. Here's a breakdown of the variable Declaration: ** Dim **  Short for Dimension. It's a type of variable. You declare (or "tell" Visual Basic) that you are setting up a variable with this word. We'll meet other types of variables later, but for now just remember to start your variable declarations with Dim. ** number1 **  This is the cardboard box and the sticky label all in one. This is a variable; in other words, our storage area. After the “Dim” word, Visual Basic is looking for the name of your variable. You can call your variable almost anything you like, but there are a few reserved words that VB won't allow. It's good practice to give your variables a name appropriate to what is going in the variable. ** As Integer **  We're telling Visual Basic that the variable is going to be a number (integer). We’ll meet alternatives to Integer later. ** Number1 = 3 ** // __ The equals sign is not actually an equals sign  __ //. The = sign means “** assign a value of”  **. In other words, HERE IS WHERE YOU PUT SOMETHING IN YOUR VARIABLE. We're telling Visual Basic to assign a value of 3 to the variable called number1. Think back to the piece of paper going into the cardboard box. Well, this is the programming equivalent of writing a value on a piece of paper