Naming Values

What names can you choose for the values you store? The names must begin with a letter, but can be followed by any sequence of letters, numbers, and the underscore character _.

A more important question is what names should you choose for your values? The names you choose should be,

• descriptive of the values they refer to, to enhance program readability,
• short, for convenience,
• all lowercase, to adhere to Python convention.

The computer doesn't care what you call them. For example our program would run as well if we changed the variable names to be,

x = int(input())
y = (x - 32) * 5 / 9
print(y)

or even,

fish_guts = int(input())
corn_flakes = (fish_guts - 32) * 5 / 9
print(corn_flakes)

I, however, care very much what you call them, as will the other programmers you work with, and even you when you come back to modify your code in six months, or six years. The two versions above are respectively, obscure, and downright misleading, and would be graded accordingly!