Network Security Tools

Local and Global Variables

Variables exist only within the blocks in which they are defined. A block is a collection of statements enclosed by special statements such as loops and function calls. For example, if you define a variable within a particular function call, it will not exist when the function call returns. At times, it is necessary to define variables that should exist globally; in such cases you should use global_var to define them:

global_var myglobalvariable;

Variables are local by default. You can also use local_var to state this explicitly.