Mutable and Immutable Variables/Data Types

As you have seen, previously we created variables using the val keyword. However, there are, in fact, two types of variables in Scala: mutable and immutable and consequently two key words:var and val, respectively.

Immutable Variables

Let's first discuss immutable variables.

If a variable is declared as immutable, it means that its state cannot be modified after initialization. Any attempt to reassign a new value to the variable will result in a compile-time error. In Scala, immutable variables are declared using the val keyword which means that we have previously dealt only with immutable variables.

Immutable variables are exactly what we need whenever we have to initialize a constant.

Main


              1
            
val pi = 3.14 // Initializing a constant

As you can see, we have used an immutable variable named pi for storing a the value of Pi which is a constant and should not be changed.

Mutable Variables

Now, let's proceed to mutable variables.

This means that after you assign an initial value to a mutable variable, you can later change or update that value to something different as needed throughout the scope in which the variable is accessible. In Scala, mutable variables are declared with the var keyword, and they allow for reassignment.

Let's now take a look at an example:

Main


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object Main {
  def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
    var myAge = 10
    println(myAge)
    myAge = myAge + 1 // Increasing the value of myAge by 1
    println(myAge)
  }
}

As you can see, we have successfully added changed the value of the myAge variable by adding 1 to it, so now its value is 11. If our variable was immutable (val), we would get an error.

Mutable and Immutable Data Types

Speaking of mutable and immutable data types (or rather their instances, to be precise) in Scala, these concepts have a slightly different meaning.

All of the previously mentioned basic data types are immutable, while Array is mutable, which we'll discuss later in the course.

With basic data types immutability means the value represented by an instance of the basic data type (e.g instance of Int) cannot be changed or altered once it is created.

Let's now take a look at an example to make things clear:

Main


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object Main {
  def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
    var number = 20
    number = 30
    println(number)
  }
}

In this code, number is initially assigned the value 20. When we later assign number to 30, we're not changing the value 20 into 30. Instead, number now simply references a different object in computer memory, 30.

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