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While a constant does not change its value while the program is running, an object declared const may indeed change its value while the program is running. A common example are read only registers within embedded systems like the current state of a digital input. The data registers for digital inputs are often declared as const and volatile.
A third way is by declaring and defining a variable as being "constant". A global variable or static variable can be declared (or a symbol defined in assembly) with a keyword qualifier such as const, constant, or final, meaning that its value will be set at compile time and should not be changeable at runtime. Compilers generally put static ...
When a variable is defined, the compiler allocates memory for that variable and possibly also initializes its contents to some value. When a variable is declared, the compiler requires that the variable be defined elsewhere. The declaration informs the compiler that a variable by that name and type exists, but the compiler does not need to ...
Simple analysis of the uses of values would show that the value of b after the first assignment is not used inside foo. Furthermore, b is declared as a local variable inside foo, so its value cannot be used outside foo. Thus, the variable b is dead and an optimizer can reclaim its storage space and eliminate its initialization.
The final value of k is undefined. The answer that it must be 10 assumes that it started at zero, which may or may not be true. Note that in the example, the variable i is initialized to zero by the first clause of the for statement. Another example can be when dealing with structs.
While a variable or function may be declared many times, it is typically defined once (in C++, this is known as the One Definition Rule or ODR). Dynamic languages such as JavaScript or Python generally allow functions to be redefined, that is, re-bound; a function is a variable much like any other, with a name and a value (the definition).
An unreferenced variable in the source code of a computer program is a variable that is defined but which is never used. This may result in a harmless waste of memory. Many compilers detect such variables and do not allocate storage for them (i.e., "optimize away" their storage), generally also issuing a warning as they do.
Variable declarations further have an optional storage class specifier. Properly this is a separate topic, distinct from the type, though const on a variable declaration is also taken to have implications for the storage class, namely that it can be stored in read-only memory.