Declaring and Initializing Variables

We've seen some variables already. A variable is a name for a piece of memory that stores data. When you declare a variable, you need to state the variable type along with giving it a name. For example, the following code declares two variables. One is named zooName and is of type String. The other is named numberAnimals and is of type int.

String zooName;
int numberAnimals;

Now that we've declared a variable, we can give it a value. This is called initializing a variable. To initialize a variable, you just type the variable name followed by an equal sign, followed by the desired value:

zooName = "The Best Zoo";
numberAnimals = 100;

Since you often want to initialize a variable right away, you can do so in the same statement as the declaration. For example, here we merge the previous declarations and initializations into more concise code:

String zooName = "The Best Zoo";
int numberAnimals = 100;

In the following sections...