Variable Names

Variable Names

A variable can have a short name (like x and y) or a more descriptive name (age, carname, total_volume).

Rules for Python variables:

• A variable name must start with a letter or the underscore character
• A variable name cannot start with a number
• A variable name can only contain alpha-numeric characters and underscores (A-z, 0-9, and _ )
• Variable names are case-sensitive (age, Age and AGE are three different variables)
• A variable name cannot be any of the Python keywords.

Example

myvar = "John"
my_var = "John"
_my_var = "John"
myVar = "John"
  MYVAR = "John"
myvar2 = "John"

Example

2myvar = "John"
my-var = "John"
  my var = "John"

Note: Remember that variable names are case-sensitive

Multi Words Variable Names

Variable names with more than one word can be difficult to read.

There are several techniques you can use to make them more readable:

Camel Case

Each word, except the first, starts with a capital letter:

Pascal Case

Each word starts with a capital letter:

Snake Case

Each word is separated by an underscore character: