One of the most powerful features of a programming language is the ability to manipulate variables. A variable is a name that refers to a value.
An assignment statement creates new variables and gives them values:
>>> message = 'And now for something completely different'
>>> n = 17
>>> pi = 3.1415926535897931
This example makes three assignments. The first assigns a string to a new variable named message
; the second assigns the integer 17
to n
; the third assigns the (approximate) value of π to pi
.
To display the value of a variable, you can use a print statement:
>>> print(n)
17
>>> print(pi)
3.141592653589793
The type of a variable is the type of the value it refers to.
>>> type(message)
<class 'str'>
>>> type(n)
<class 'int'>
>>> type(pi)
<class 'float'>