Variables (Strings)

A core concept in programming is storing information. Most of the time, we don’t just want to display something on the screen; we want to process it first, do something with it, and then maybe display the result

print("My name is Tommy Vercetti")

In the previous lesson, we learned that this will display

My name is Tommy Vercetti

print() does exactly that. However, wouldn’t it be more organized to store the name somewhere first and then say something like My name is ..., no matter what the name is? For example My name is Lance Vance or My name is Paul. Somehow, it doesn’t matter which name it is, what matters is that we can display it, whichever it may be

Well, yes, there is a way to not care about the specific name, but just display it. This is called a variable in programming

name = "Tommy Vercetti"
print(name)

name = "Lance Vance"
print(name)

name = "Paul"
print(name)
print(name)
print(name)

If we run the code by pressing the Run Code button, we will see that Paul appears 3 times, because we used print(name) 3 times. We can see that we don’t necessarily care what the name is, because it can change. What matters is that we can display it and use it

However, be careful: if we don’t put "", we will get an error. The code below will not work

name = Paul
print(name)

Why doesn’t it work? Python thinks that Paul is a variable. If we want to tell it that it is not a variable, but text, we need to put it inside "". Text in programming is called a string

A slightly more advanced example, but worth studying, is:

Kent = "Booooo"
name = Kent
print(name)

We might be tempted to think that Kent will be displayed, but that is not true. Booooo will be displayed instead. Why? Because if we don’t put "", Python thinks that Kent is a variable and not our name. It sees name = Kent, and since Kent doesn’t have "", it looks for a variable with that name defined earlier and replaces it with Booooo.

Kent = "Booooo"
name = "Kent"
print(name)

This code will indeed display the name exactly as we intended. Run it :)

So, anything we write between " and " is called a string and is used whenever we want to write text that Python should treat exactly as we intend, and not as a variable.

Mission: Crew Roster

Three crew members are assigned to the station. Their names are stored in the variables commander, pilot, and engineer at the top of your code. The starter names are just examples, put any names you like in them.

Print the three names, each on its own line, in this order: commander, pilot, engineer. Then the pilot is swapped out mid-mission, so add a line that changes pilot to a new name of your choice and print pilot one more time.

Input (already set at the top of your code, change the values to test):

• commander, pilot, engineer: the crew member names

Example

With the starter values, and "Jess" as the new pilot, your program would print something like

Shadow
Lance
Quincy
Jess