Squirrel Variables

Every program in any programming language is comprised of a set of instructions called statements which manipulate data to produce a desired result. Programs store data into regions of memory as objects. Objects which we give an identifier (name) in our programs are called variables. You can think of statements as analogous to sentences in the language we speak to each other, each requires a specific set of items to be considered valid, and each is ended with a specific character. Sentences are mostly ended with periods, and statements always end with a semicolon.

Identifiers have a few considerations to keep in mind:

• They are case-sensitive, wep is not the same as WEP
• The first character must be alphabetical (a-z) or an underscore, afterwards they can have any combination of (a-z), (0-9), or underscores
• Underscores are the only special character allowed, nothing else

Valid Identifiers:

• INDEX
• _weapon
• weapon_sequence
• player123

Invalid Identifiers:

• starting-index
• 1_ring_to_rule_them_all
• BOLD&BRASH
• $IMBATMAN

In addition, identifiers cannot be the same name as a keyword, which are special identifiers reserved by the language for its use in the syntax. We'll go over most of these throughout the guide, so don't worry about memorizing them just yet.

Keywords

base	break	case	catch	class	clone
continue	const	default	delete	else	enum
extends	for	foreach	function	if	in
local	null	resume	return	switch	this
throw	try	typeof	while	yield	constructor
instanceof	true	false	static	__LINE__	__FILE__
rawcall

To define a variable with x as it's identifier, we use the local keyword:

local x;

We created our variable in this statement but we haven't given it a value, so currently the value for x is null, which is a special value representing the lack of a value. To give our variable an actual value we have two options; we can set it at the time of definition (which is called initialization), or we can assign it a value with the assignment (=) operator in a separate statement, or both!

local x;
local y = 10;

x = 5;
y = 0;

Here we define x and initialize y to 10, and then set x to 5 and y to 0 afterwards.