How does one refer to a global variable bearing the same name as a local one inside the body of a function?

Question

What if we define a global variable int x; and inside the body of a function define another variable int x;.

Inside the function 'x' would always refer to the local variable 'x'. Now if the user must refer to the global variable x inside the very function how does one achieve that?

In C you can't. If you have hidden a symbol then there's no way to access it. — Some programmer dude, Sep 18 '17 at 08:17
How about next time you insert the question title into Google search box first. — Antti Haapala -- Слава Україні, Sep 18 '17 at 08:35
@AnttiHaapala, removed, thanks for mentioning, I'll keep things in mind for sure. — Wasif Ali, Sep 18 '17 at 08:37

Richard-Degenne · Answer 1 · 2017-09-18T10:35:01.327

2

Since your question is tagged "C", I'll answer about that language. Other languages may provide syntactic sugar or mechanisms to do what you want.

Defining a variable using the name of a variable existing in a greater scope is called shadowing: the inner definition shadows the outer one.

Below is an example:

int x = 42;

int main() {
    int x = 0; // Here, `x` shadows the global `x`.
    printf("%d\n", x); // Prints '0'
}

In C, there is no way to get the value of the shadowed variable.

On the style plan, shadowing is often considered a bad practice since it makes your code less legible and harder to refactor.

edited Sep 18 '17 at 10:35

answered Sep 18 '17 at 08:34

Richard-Degenne

2,892
2
26
43

Correct. Please change "As far as I know," into "In C," as there is no way in C to get to the shadowed variable. – Paul Ogilvie Sep 18 '17 at 09:53
Thanks for confirming this. :) – Richard-Degenne Sep 18 '17 at 10:34

How does one refer to a global variable bearing the same name as a local one inside the body of a function?

1 Answers1