Lesson plan

Undefined variable

An undefined variable in the source code of a computer program is a variable that is accessed in the code but has not been declared by that code. In some programming languages, an implicit declaration is provided the first time such a variable is encountered at compile time. In other languages such a usage is considered to be sufficiently serious that a diagnostic being issued and the compilation fails. Some language definitions initially used the implicit declaration behavior and as they matured provided an option to disable it (e.g. Perl's " use warnings " or Visual Basic's " Option Explicit ").

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Article summary

An undefined variable in the source code of a computer program is a variable that is accessed in the code but has not been declared by that code. In some programming languages, an implicit declaration is provided the first time such a variable is encountered at compile time. In other languages such a usage is considered to be sufficiently serious that a diagnostic being issued and the compilation fails. Some language definitions initially used the implicit declaration behavior and as they matured provided an option to disable it (e.g. Perl's " use warnings " or Visual Basic's " Option Explicit ").

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Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

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