In computer programming, a variable is an abstract storage location paired with an associated symbolic name, which contains some known or unknown quantity of information referred to as a value; or in simpler terms, a variable is a container for a particular set of bits or type of data (like integer, float, String etc...). A variable can eventually be associated with or identified by a …

In computer programming, an assignment statement sets and/or re-sets the value stored in the storage location(s) denoted by a variable name; in other words, it copies a value into the variable.In most imperative programming languages, the assignment statement (or expression) is a fundamental construct.. Today, the most commonly used notation for this operation is x = …

In programming languages, a closure, also lexical closure or function closure, is a technique for implementing lexically scoped name binding in a language with first-class functions. Operationally, a closure is a record storing a function together with an environment. The environment is a mapping associating each free variable of the function (variables that are used locally, but …

In computer programming, a reference is a value that enables a program to indirectly access a particular data, such as a variable's value or a record, in the computer's memory or in some other storage device.The reference is said to refer to the datum, and accessing the datum is called dereferencing the reference. A reference is distinct from the datum itself.

In computer science, an object can be a variable, a data structure, a function, or a method.As regions of memory, they contain value and are referenced by identifiers.. In the object-oriented programming paradigm, object can be a combination of variables, functions, and data structures; in particular in class-based variations of the paradigm it refers to a particular instance of a class.

In programming language theory, semantics is the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages. Semantics assigns computational meaning to valid strings in a programming language syntax.. Semantics describes the processes a computer follows when executing a program in that specific language. This can be shown by describing the …

In computer science, data that has several parts, known as a record, can be divided into fields (data fields). Relational databases arrange data as sets of database records, so called rows.Each record consists of several fields; the fields of all records form the columns.Examples of fields: name, gender, hair colour. In object-oriented programming, a field (also called data member or …

In computer science, an operation, function or expression is said to have a side effect if it modifies some state variable value(s) outside its local environment, which is to say if it has any observable effect other than its primary effect of returning a value to the invoker of the operation. Example side effects include modifying a non-local variable, modifying a static local variable ...

In computer science, garbage collection (GC) is a form of automatic memory management.The garbage collector attempts to reclaim memory which was allocated by the program, but is no longer referenced; such memory is called garbage.Garbage collection was invented by American computer scientist John McCarthy around 1959 to simplify manual memory management in Lisp.

In science and research, an attribute is a quality of an object (person, thing, etc.). Attributes are closely related to variables. A variable is a logical set of attributes. Variables can "vary" – for example, be high or low. How high, or how low, is determined by the value of the attribute (and in fact, an attribute could be just the word "low" or "high").