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Showing content from http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/variables/ below:

However, programming is not limited only to printing simple texts on the screen. In order to go a little further on and to become able to write programs that perform useful tasks that really save us work, we need to introduce the concept of variables.

Let's imagine that I ask you to remember the number 5, and then I ask you to also memorize the number 2 at the same time. You have just stored two different values in your memory (5 and 2). Now, if I ask you to add 1 to the first number I said, you should be retaining the numbers 6 (that is 5+1) and 2 in your memory. Then we could, for example, subtract these values and obtain 4 as result.

The whole process described above is a simile of what a computer can do with two variables. The same process can be expressed in C++ with the following set of statements:

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a = 5;
b = 2;
a = a + 1;
result = a - b;

We can now define variable as a portion of memory to store a value.

Each variable needs a name that identifies it and distinguishes it from the others. For example, in the previous code the variable names were a, b, and result, but we could have called the variables any names we could have come up with, as long as they were valid C++ identifiers.

C++ uses a number of keywords to identify operations and data descriptions; therefore, identifiers created by a programmer cannot match these keywords. The standard reserved keywords that cannot be used for programmer created identifiers are:

alignas, alignof, and, and_eq, asm, auto, bitand, bitor, bool, break, case, catch, char, char16_t, char32_t, class, compl, const, constexpr, const_cast, continue, decltype, default, delete, do, double, dynamic_cast, else, enum, explicit, export, extern, false, float, for, friend, goto, if, inline, int, long, mutable, namespace, new, noexcept, not, not_eq, nullptr, operator, or, or_eq, private, protected, public, register, reinterpret_cast, return, short, signed, sizeof, static, static_assert, static_cast, struct, switch, template, this, thread_local, throw, true, try, typedef, typeid, typename, union, unsigned, using, virtual, void, volatile, wchar_t, while, xor, xor_eq


Very important: The C++ language is a "case sensitive" language. That means that an identifier written in capital letters is not equivalent to another one with the same name but written in small letters. Thus, for example, the RESULT variable is not the same as the result variable or the Result variable. These are three different identifiers identifiying three different variables.

Fundamental data types are basic types implemented directly by the language that represent the basic storage units supported natively by most systems. They can mainly be classified into:

• Character types: They can represent a single character, such as 'A' or '$'. The most basic type is char, which is a one-byte character. Other types are also provided for wider characters.
• Numerical integer types: They can store a whole number value, such as 7 or 1024. They exist in a variety of sizes, and can either be signed or unsigned, depending on whether they support negative values or not.
• Floating-point types: They can represent real values, such as 3.14 or 0.01, with different levels of precision, depending on which of the three floating-point types is used.
• Boolean type: The boolean type, known in C++ as bool, can only represent one of two states, true or false.

Within each of the groups above, the difference between types is only their size (i.e., how much they occupy in memory): the first type in each group is the smallest, and the last is the largest, with each type being at least as large as the one preceding it in the same group. Other than that, the types in a group have the same properties.

Note in the panel above that other than char (which has a size of exactly one byte), none of the fundamental types has a standard size specified (but a minimum size, at most). Therefore, the type is not required (and in many cases is not) exactly this minimum size. This does not mean that these types are of an undetermined size, but that there is no standard size across all compilers and machines; each compiler implementation may specify the sizes for these types that fit the best the architecture where the program is going to run. This rather generic size specification for types gives the C++ language a lot of flexibility to be adapted to work optimally in all kinds of platforms, both present and future.

Type sizes above are expressed in bits; the more bits a type has, the more distinct values it can represent, but at the same time, also consumes more space in memory:

For floating-point types, the size affects their precision, by having more or less bits for their significant and exponent.

If the size or precision of the type is not a concern, then char, int, and double are typically selected to represent characters, integers, and floating-point values, respectively. The other types in their respective groups are only used in very particular cases.

The properties of fundamental types in a particular system and compiler implementation can be obtained by using the numeric_limits classes (see standard header <limits>). If for some reason, types of specific sizes are needed, the library defines certain fixed-size type aliases in header <cstdint>.

The types described above (characters, integers, floating-point, and boolean) are collectively known as arithmetic types. But two additional fundamental types exist: void, which identifies the lack of type; and the type nullptr, which is a special type of pointer. Both types will be discussed further in a coming chapter about pointers.

C++ supports a wide variety of types based on the fundamental types discussed above; these other types are known as compound data types, and are one of the main strengths of the C++ language. We will also see them in more detail in future chapters.

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int a;
float mynumber;

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int a;
int b;
int c;

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// operating with variables

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
  // declaring variables:
  int a, b;
  int result;

  // process:
  a = 5;
  b = 2;
  a = a + 1;
  result = a - b;

  // print out the result:
  cout << result;

  // terminate the program:
  return 0;
}

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In C++, there are three ways to initialize variables. They are all equivalent and are reminiscent of the evolution of the language over the years:

The first one, known as c-like initialization (because it is inherited from the C language), consists of appending an equal sign followed by the value to which the variable is initialized:

type identifier = initial_value;

type identifier (initial_value);

type identifier {initial_value};

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// initialization of variables

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
  int a=5;               // initial value: 5
  int b(3);              // initial value: 3
  int c{2};              // initial value: 2
  int result;            // initial value undetermined

  a = a + b;
  result = a - c;
  cout << result;

  return 0;
}

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int foo = 0;
auto bar = foo;  // the same as: int bar = foo; 

Variables that are not initialized can also make use of type deduction with the decltype specifier:

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int foo = 0;
decltype(foo) bar;  // the same as: int bar; 

auto and decltype are powerful features recently added to the language. But the type deduction features they introduce are meant to be used either when the type cannot be obtained by other means or when using it improves code readability. The two examples above were likely neither of these use cases. In fact they probably decreased readability, since, when reading the code, one has to search for the type of foo to actually know the type of bar.

An example of compound type is the string class. Variables of this type are able to store sequences of characters, such as words or sentences. A very useful feature!

A first difference with fundamental data types is that in order to declare and use objects (variables) of this type, the program needs to include the header where the type is defined within the standard library (header <string>):

// my first string
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
  string mystring;
  mystring = "This is a string";
  cout << mystring;
  return 0;
}

This is a string

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string mystring = "This is a string";
string mystring ("This is a string");
string mystring {"This is a string"};

// my first string
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
  string mystring;
  mystring = "This is the initial string content";
  cout << mystring << endl;
  mystring = "This is a different string content";
  cout << mystring << endl;
  return 0;
}

This is the initial string content
This is a different string content

The string class is a compound type. As you can see in the example above, compound types are used in the same way as fundamental types: the same syntax is used to declare variables and to initialize them.

For more details on standard C++ strings, see the string class reference.

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