Control variable (programming): Difference between revisions

A control variable in computer programming is a program variable that is used to regulate the flow of control of the program.

In definite iteration, control variables are variables which are successively assigned (or bound to) values from a predetermined sequence of values.^[1]

Special rules

In some programming languages control variables are just ordinary variables used for manipulating the program flow. This is the case of C, Fortran, and Pascal, which allow for control variables to have their values changed within the loop body.^[1] However, some languages have special rules for control variables. In Ada, for instance, the control variable of the for loop must remain constant within the loop body.

References

^ ^a ^b Watt, David A. (2004). Programming Language Design Concepts. Wiley. pp. 84–85.

v t e Computer science
Note: This template roughly follows the 2012 ACM Computing Classification System.
Hardware	Printed circuit board Peripheral Integrated circuit Very-large-scale integration System on a chip (SoC) Energy consumption (green computing) Electronic design automation Hardware acceleration Processor Size / Form
Computer systems organization	Computer architecture Computational complexity Dependability Embedded system Real-time computing Cyber-physical system Fault tolerance Wireless sensor network
Networks	Network architecture Network protocol Network components Network scheduler Network performance evaluation Network service
Software organization	Interpreter Middleware Virtual machine Operating system Software quality
Software notations and tools	Programming paradigm Programming language Compiler Domain-specific language Modeling language Software framework Integrated development environment Software configuration management Software library Software repository
Software development	Control variable Software development process Requirements analysis Software design Software construction Software deployment Software engineering Software maintenance Programming team Open-source model
Theory of computation	Model of computation Stochastic Formal language Automata theory Computability theory Computational complexity theory Logic Semantics
Algorithms	Algorithm design Analysis of algorithms Algorithmic efficiency Randomized algorithm Computational geometry
Mathematics of computing	Discrete mathematics Probability Statistics Mathematical software Information theory Mathematical analysis Numerical analysis Theoretical computer science
Information systems	Database management system Information storage systems Enterprise information system Social information systems Geographic information system Decision support system Process control system Multimedia information system Data mining Digital library Computing platform Digital marketing World Wide Web Information retrieval
Security	Cryptography Formal methods Security hacker Security services Intrusion detection system Hardware security Network security Information security Application security
Human–centered computing	Interaction design Augmented reality Virtual reality Social computing Ubiquitous computing Visualization Accessibility Human–computer interaction Mobile computing
Concurrency	Concurrent computing Parallel computing Distributed computing Multithreading Multiprocessing
Artificial intelligence	Natural language processing Knowledge representation and reasoning Computer vision Automated planning and scheduling Search methodology Control method Philosophy of artificial intelligence Distributed artificial intelligence
Machine learning	Supervised learning Unsupervised learning Reinforcement learning Multi-task learning Cross-validation
Graphics	Animation Rendering Photograph manipulation Graphics processing unit Image compression Solid modeling
Applied computing	Quantum computing E-commerce Enterprise software Computational mathematics Computational physics Computational chemistry Computational biology Computational social science Computational engineering Differentiable computing Computational healthcare Digital art Electronic publishing Cyberwarfare Electronic voting Video games Word processing Operations research Educational technology Document management
Category Outline Glossaries

This computer science article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 == Special rules ==
-In some programming languages control variables are just ordinary variables used for manipulating the program flow. This is the case of [[C (programming language)|C]], [[Fortran]], and [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]], which allow for control variables to have their values changed within the loop body.<ref name="Watt"/> However, some languages have special rules for control variables. In [[Ada]]{{dn|date=November 2018}}, for instance, the control variable of the for loop must remain constant within the loop body.
+In some programming languages control variables are just ordinary variables used for manipulating the program flow. This is the case of [[C (programming language)|C]], [[Fortran]], and [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]], which allow for control variables to have their values changed within the loop body.<ref name="Watt"/> However, some languages have special rules for control variables. In [[Ada (programming language)|Ada]], for instance, the control variable of the for loop must remain constant within the loop body.
 == References ==

Revision as of 14:18, 10 November 2018

Special rules

References