Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours, Third Edition

Assigning Values to Your Variables

You assign a value to a variable by using the assignment operator (=). Thus, you would assign 5 to Width by writing

unsigned short Width;
Width = 5;

You can combine these steps and initialize Width when you define it by writing

unsigned short Width = 5;

Initialization looks very much like assignment, and with integer variables, the difference is minor. Later, when constants are covered, you will see that some values must be initialized because they cannot be assigned a value.

Listing 3.2 shows a complete program, ready to compile, that computes the area of a rectangle and writes the answer to the screen.

Listing 3.2. Demonstrates the Use of Variables

0: // Demonstration of variables 1: #include <iostream> ...