Chapter 5

Names, Bindings,
and Scopes

ISBN 0-321-49362-1
Chapter 5 Topics

• Introduction
• Names
• Variables
• The Concept of Binding
• Scope
• Scope and Lifetime
• Referencing Environments
• Named Constants

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Introduction

• Imperative languages are abstractions of

von Neumann architecture
– Memory
– Processor
• Variables characterized by attributes
– To design a type, must consider scope,
lifetime, type checking, initialization, and type
compatibility

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Names

• Design issues for names:

– Are names case sensitive?
– Are special words reserved words or
keywords?

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Names (continued)

• Length
– If too short, they cannot be connotative
– Language examples:
• FORTRAN 95: maximum of 31
• C99: no limit but only the first 63 are significant;
also, external names are limited to a maximum of
31
• C#, Ada, and Java: no limit, and all are significant
• C++: no limit, but implementers often impose one

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Names (continued)

• Special characters
– PHP: all variable names must begin with dollar
signs
– Perl: all variable names begin with special
characters, which specify the variable’s type
– Ruby: variable names that begin with @ are
instance variables; those that begin with @@
are class variables

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Names (continued)

• Case sensitivity
– Disadvantage: readability (names that look
alike are different)
• Names in the C-based languages are case
sensitive
• Names in others are not
• Worse in C++, Java, and C# because predefined
names are mixed case (e.g.
IndexOutOfBoundsException)

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Names (continued)

• Special words
– An aid to readability; used to delimit or
separate statement clauses
• A keyword is a word that is special only in certain
contexts, e.g., in Fortran
– Real VarName (Real is a data type followed with a name,
therefore Real is a keyword)
– Real = 3.4 (Real is a variable)

– A reserved word is a special word that cannot

be used as a user-defined name
– Potential problem with reserved words: If there
are too many, many collisions occur (e.g.,
COBOL has 300 reserved words!)
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Variables

• A variable is an abstraction of a memory

cell
• Variables can be characterized as a
sextuple of attributes:
– Name
– Address
– Value
– Type
– Lifetime
– Scope
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Variables Attributes

• Name - not all variables have them

• Address - the memory address with which it is
associated
– A variable may have different addresses at different
times during execution
– A variable may have different addresses at different
places in a program
– If two variable names can be used to access the same
memory location, they are called aliases
– Aliases are created via pointers, reference variables, C
and C++ unions
– Aliases are harmful to readability (program
readers must remember all of them)

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Variables Attributes (continued)

• Type - determines the range of values of

variables and the set of operations that are
defined for values of that type; in the case of
floating point, type also determines the precision
• Value - the contents of the location with which
the variable is associated
- The l-value of a variable is its address
- The r-value of a variable is its value
• Abstract memory cell - the physical cell or
collection of cells associated with a variable

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The Concept of Binding

A binding is an association, such as

between an attribute and an entity, or
between an operation and a symbol
• Binding time is the time at which a
binding takes place.

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1-13
Possible Binding Times

• Language design time -- bind operator

symbols to operations
• Language implementation time-- bind
floating point type to a representation
• Compile time -- bind a variable to a type
in C or Java
• Load time -- bind a C or C++ static
variable to a memory cell)
• Runtime -- bind a nonstatic local
variable to a memory cell
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Static and Dynamic Binding

• A binding is static if it first occurs before

run time and remains unchanged
throughout program execution.
• A binding is dynamic if it first occurs
during execution or can change during
execution of the program

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Type Binding

• How is a type specified?

• When does the binding take place?
• If static, the type may be specified by
either an explicit or an implicit declaration

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Explicit/Implicit Declaration
• An explicit declaration is a program
statement used for declaring the types of
variables
• An implicit declaration is a default
mechanism for specifying types of
variables (the first appearance of the
variable in the program)
• FORTRAN, BASIC, and Perl provide implicit
declarations (Fortran has both explicit and
implicit)
– Advantage: writability
– Disadvantage: reliability (less trouble with Perl)
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Dynamic Type Binding

• Dynamic Type Binding (JavaScript and PHP)

• Specified through an assignment statement
e.g., JavaScript
list = [2, 4.33, 6, 8];
list = 17.3;
– Advantage: flexibility (generic program units)
– Disadvantages:
• High cost (dynamic type checking and
interpretation)
• Type error detection by the compiler is difficult

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Variable Attributes (continued)

• Type Inferencing (ML, Miranda, and

Haskell)
– Rather than by assignment statement, types
are determined (by the compiler) from the
context of the reference
• Storage Bindings & Lifetime
– Allocation - getting a cell from some pool of
available cells
– Deallocation - putting a cell back into the pool
• The lifetime of a variable is the time during
which it is bound to a particular memory
cell
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Categories of Variables by
Lifetimes
• Static--bound to memory cells before
execution begins and remains bound to
the same memory cell throughout
execution, e.g., C and C++ static
variables
– Advantages: efficiency (direct addressing),
history-sensitive subprogram support
– Disadvantage: lack of flexibility (no recursion)

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Categories of Variables by
Lifetimes
• Stack-dynamic--Storage bindings are created for
variables when their declaration statements are
elaborated.
(A declaration is elaborated when the
executable code associated with it is executed)
• If scalar, all attributes except address are
statically bound
– local variables in C subprograms and Java methods
• Advantage: allows recursion; conserves storage
• Disadvantages:
– Overhead of allocation and deallocation
– Subprograms cannot be history sensitive
– Inefficient references (indirect addressing)
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Categories of Variables by
Lifetimes
• Explicit heap-dynamic -- Allocated and
deallocated by explicit directives, specified by
the programmer, which take effect during
execution
• Referenced only through pointers or references,
e.g. dynamic objects in C++ (via new and delete),
all objects in Java
• Advantage: provides for dynamic storage
management
• Disadvantage: inefficient and unreliable

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 Categories of Variables by
Lifetimes
• Implicit heap-dynamic--Allocation and
deallocation caused by assignment
statements
– all variables in APL; all strings and arrays in
Perl, JavaScript, and PHP
• Advantage: flexibility (generic code)
• Disadvantages:
– Inefficient, because all attributes are dynamic
– Loss of error detection

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Variable Attributes: Scope

• The scope of a variable is the range of

statements over which it is visible
• The nonlocal variables of a program unit
are those that are visible but not declared
there
• The scope rules of a language determine
how references to names are associated
with variables

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Static Scope

• Based on program text

• To connect a name reference to a variable, you
(or the compiler) must find the declaration
• Search process: search declarations, first locally,
then in increasingly larger enclosing scopes, until
one is found for the given name
• Enclosing static scopes (to a specific scope) are
called its static ancestors; the nearest static
ancestor is called a static parent
• Some languages allow nested subprogram
definitions, which create nested static scopes
(e.g., Ada, JavaScript, Fortran 2003, and PHP)

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Scope (continued)

• Variables can be hidden from a unit by

having a "closer" variable with the same
name
• Ada allows access to these "hidden"
variables
– E.g., unit.name

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Blocks

– A method of creating static scopes inside program

units--from ALGOL 60
– Example in C:
void sub() {
int count;
while (...) {
int count;
count++;
...
}
…
}

- Note: legal in C and C++, but not in Java

and C# - too error-prone

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Declaration Order

• C99, C++, Java, and C# allow variable

declarations to appear anywhere a
statement can appear
– In C99, C++, and Java, the scope of all local
variables is from the declaration to the end of
the block
– In C#, the scope of any variable declared in a
block is the whole block, regardless of the
position of the declaration in the block
• However, a variable still must be declared before
it can be used

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Declaration Order (continued)

• In C++, Java, and C#, variables can be

declared in for statements
– The scope of such variables is restricted to the
for construct

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Global Scope

• C, C++, PHP, and Python support a

program structure that consists of a
sequence of function definitions in a file
– These languages allow variable declarations to
appear outside function definitions

• C and C++have both declarations (just

attributes) and definitions (attributes and
storage)
– A declaration outside a function definition
specifies that it is defined in another file
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Global Scope (continued)

• PHP
– Programs are embedded in XHTML markup
documents, in any number of fragments, some
statements and some function definitions
– The scope of a variable (implicitly) declared in
a function is local to the function
– The scope of a variable implicitly declared
outside functions is from the declaration to the
end of the program, but skips over any
intervening functions
• Global variables can be accessed in a function
through the $GLOBALS array or by declaring it global
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Global Scope (continued)

• Python
– A global variable can be referenced in
functions, but can be assigned in a function
only if it has been declared to be global in the
function

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Evaluation of Static Scoping

• Works well in many situations

• Problems:
– In most cases, too much access is possible
– As a program evolves, the initial structure is
destroyed and local variables often become
global; subprograms also gravitate toward
become global, rather than nested

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Dynamic Scope

• Based on calling sequences of program

units, not their textual layout (temporal
versus spatial)
• References to variables are connected to
declarations by searching back through
the chain of subprogram calls that forced
execution to this point

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Scope Example
Big
- declaration of X
Sub1
- declaration of X -
...
call Sub2
...
Big calls Sub1
Sub1 calls Sub2
Sub2
...
Sub2 uses X
- reference to X -
...

...
call Sub1
…

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Scope Example
• Static scoping
– Reference to X is to Big's X
• Dynamic scoping
– Reference to X is to Sub1's X
• Evaluation of Dynamic Scoping:
– Advantage: convenience
– Disadvantages:
1. While a subprogram is executing, its variables
are visible to all subprograms it calls
2. Impossible to statically type check
3. Poor readability- it is not possible to statically
determine the type of a variable
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Scope and Lifetime

• Scope and lifetime are sometimes closely

related, but are different concepts
• Consider a static variable in a C or C++
function

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Referencing Environments

• The referencing environment of a statement is

the collection of all names that are visible in the
statement
• In a static-scoped language, it is the local
variables plus all of the visible variables in all of
the enclosing scopes
• A subprogram is active if its execution has begun
but has not yet terminated
• In a dynamic-scoped language, the referencing
environment is the local variables plus all visible
variables in all active subprograms

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Named Constants

• A named constant is a variable that is bound to a

value only when it is bound to storage
• Advantages: readability and modifiability
• Used to parameterize programs
• The binding of values to named constants can be
either static (called manifest constants) or dynamic
• Languages:
– FORTRAN 95: constant-valued expressions
– Ada, C++, and Java: expressions of any kind
– C# has two kinds, readonly and const
- the values of const named constants are bound at
compile time
- The values of readonly named constants are
dynamically bound

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Summary

• Case sensitivity and the relationship of names to

special words represent design issues of names
• Variables are characterized by the sextuples:
name, address, value, type, lifetime, scope
• Binding is the association of attributes with
program entities
• Scalar variables are categorized as: static, stack
dynamic, explicit heap dynamic, implicit heap
dynamic
• Strong typing means detecting all type errors

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