How to Think About Variables in C

[Terrence Dorsey]

denniskubes.com[^]:

C is memory with syntactic sugar and as such it is helpful to think of things in C as starting from memory. One of the pieces that I think is often overlooked is variables and data types. If you have the right mental model for variables and data types it makes other concepts in C, and other langauages, easier.

I absolutely love this: "C is memory with syntactic sugar."

[Tom Clement]

The more interesting thing to me is the converse of what's written in this article. I feel like I'm missing something obvious, but how else would you think of a variable, in C or any other language? I'm not trying to be snide here. I'm honestly curious.

Tom Clement articles[^]

[PIEBALDconsult]

:thumbsup: 'Xactly.

[Lost User]

Another "C for Dummies" statement where a little obfuscation is just as good as elucidation.

Peter Wasser Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. Frank Zappa

[peterchen]

For example, a more functional definition of a type: The type defines the possible values as well as available operations. Which I find way more functional than "a number of bytes".

ORDER BY what user wants

[Tom Clement]

Ok, I guess I see that. But that seems more like metadata about the variable than the variable itself. Maybe my first job at a C compiler company is biasing me.

Tom Clement articles[^]