Types of Variable Scope

Types of Variable Scope

There are 4 types of Variable Scope, let’s discuss them one by one:

Local Scope

Local scope refers to variables defined in current function. Always, a function will first look up for a variable name in its local scope. Only if it does not find it there, the outer scopes are checked.

Look at this example

On execution of the above code the variable a displays the value 7, because it is defined and available in the local scope.

Global Scope

A variable which is declared outside of all the functions in a program is known as global variable. This means, global variable can be accessed inside or outside of all the functions in a program. Consider the following example

On execution of the above code the variable a which is defined inside the function displays the value 7 for the function call Disp() and then it displays 10, because a is defined in global scope.

Enclosed Scope

All programming languages permit functions to be nested. A function (method) with in another function is called nested function. A variable which is declared inside a function which contains another function definition with in it, the inner function can also access the variable of the outer function. This scope is called enclosed scope.

When a compiler or interpreter search for a variable in a program, it first search Local, and then search Enclosing scopes. Consider the following example

In the above example Disp1() is defined with in Disp(). The variable ‘a’ defined in Disp() can be even used by Disp1() because it is also a member of Disp().

Built-in Scope

Finally, we discuss about the widest scope. The built-in scope has all the names that are pre-loaded into the program scope when we start the compiler or interpreter. Any variable or module which is defined in the library functions of a programming language has Built-in or module scope. They are loaded as soon as the library files are imported to the program.

Normally only Functions or modules come along with the software, as packages.

Therefore they will come under Built in scope.