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The Java™ Tutorials
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Language Basics
Variables
Primitive Data Types
Arrays
Summary of Variables
Questions and Exercises
Operators
Assignment, Arithmetic, and Unary Operators
Equality, Relational, and Conditional Operators
Bitwise and Bit Shift Operators
Summary of Operators
Questions and Exercises
Expressions, Statements, and Blocks
Questions and Exercises
Control Flow Statements
The if-then and if-then-else Statements
The switch Statement
The while and do-while Statements
The for Statement
Branching Statements
Summary of Control Flow Statements
Questions and Exercises
Trail: Learning the Java Language
Lesson: Language Basics
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# Questions and Exercises: Variables

## Questions

1. The term "instance variable" is another name for ___.
2. The term "class variable" is another name for ___.
3. A local variable stores temporary state; it is declared inside a ___.
4. A variable declared within the opening and closing parenthesis of a method signature is called a ____.
5. What are the eight primitive data types supported by the Java programming language?
6. Character strings are represented by the class ___.
7. An ___ is a container object that holds a fixed number of values of a single type.

## Exercises

1. Create a small program that defines some fields. Try creating some illegal field names and see what kind of error the compiler produces. Use the naming rules and conventions as a guide.
2. In the program you created in Exercise 1, try leaving the fields uninitialized and print out their values. Try the same with a local variable and see what kind of compiler errors you can produce. Becoming familiar with common compiler errors will make it easier to recognize bugs in your code.

Check your answers

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