Variables – What happens when global & context var have the same name?

Introduction

Variables are very useful in any programming language. There are two types - global and local/context. Global variables hold values that can be accessed anywhere from the app. Context variables can be referenced from only one screen but can be passed to another screen using the Navigate function.

Tip - Accessing global variables

I recently ran into a behavior which I had not encountered before. There was a global variable in my app. But accessing that variable in a screen was resulting in a completely different value. After investigating it, I found that the screen had a context variable with the same name!

Personally, I will not suggest naming global and local variables the same. If you do, then accessing the variable, in say a label to display its value, will result in the value of the context variable being displayed. So, if global and context variables have the same name, the context variable takes precedence. But if you do, you can access the values of those 2 variables in the following ways:

1. To access the context variable's value, simply use the variable name e.g. testVar
2. To access the global variable that has the same name, use the disambiguation operator e.g. [@testVar]

To read the official documentation, click here.

Stay tuned for the remaining 4 tips!

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