Foo Bar vs. int a & int b

Hi Aaron,

You can do it if you want, use a and b instead of foo and bar but as time passes and you would come back to the code this will be misleading... You have to remember that variables inside a function are not shared within other functions, they are local only to that function, it's called namespace.

In the case of this video and its example, the int a and int b that are used as parameters of the funky_math function will only be available in that function and their values, even if changed, will not be reflected outside the function. Have a look at the example below:

int funky_math(int a, int b);
int main()
{
    int a = 1;
    int b = 1;

    int lots = funky_math(a, b);
    printf("a = %d \nb = %d \n", a, b);
    printf("funky math %d\n", lots);
    return 0;
}

int funky_math(int a, int b)  {
    a += 1;
    b += 1;
    return a + b;
}

// The output from running this would be
// a = 1 
// b = 1 
// funky math 4

As you can see, even with the values of a and b incremented by one inside the funky_math function, the original values from inside the main function are still kept.

In the beginning it might seem logical to use the same names for the variables but in the long run you will get used to longer and longer names to keep them unique.