Variable scope in Unity

In today’s blog we are going to learn about the scope of variables, and the different ways a function can be created.

So let’s get started.

Scope of Variables

A variable as we all know is a container which can hold a value or multiple values related to its type. Means a Gameobject type variable can hold any gameobject, a Transform  type variable can hold a transform component of any gameobject, etc.

But some time a variable declared is inaccessible, that’s due to its "scope of life".

A variable declared in a class is said to be a global variable to the function and local to the class where as a variable declared in a function is said to be a local variable of that function.

To understand it more clearly any variable defined within “{}” has its scope of life after the “{” starting curly braches till the “}” ending curly braces.

Let try to understand with a small example.

Step1. Write the following script attach it to any gameobject and hit run.

In this script there is two things to notice one the variable Name which is defined globally and second is the 2 local variables named Myname in each function respectively.

Let’s try something else try to remove the Myname variable declaration, see what happens an error pops up saying:

This is because Mynamescope of life starts in function friend1 “{” and ends in function Friend1 “}”.

Whereas Namevariable is accessible.

One more tip a local variable when declaired as same name of a global variable in a function will always access the local variable.

To understand more clearly write the following code and run it you will understand what I meant.

This post is open to edits and comments, so feel free to suggest in comment section.

Till than Happy Coding!