Editing Smalltalk (section)

===Variable declarations===
The two kinds of variables commonly used in Smalltalk are instance variables and temporary variables. Other variables and related terminology depend on the particular implementation. For example, [[VisualWorks]] has class shared variables and namespace shared variables, while [[Squeak]] and many other implementations have class variables, pool variables and global variables.

Temporary variable declarations in Smalltalk are variables declared inside a method (see below). They are declared at the top of the method as names separated by spaces and enclosed by vertical bars. For example:

<syntaxhighlight lang="smalltalk">| index |</syntaxhighlight>

declares a temporary variable named index which contains initially the value <code>nil</code>.

Multiple variables may be declared within one set of bars:

<syntaxhighlight lang="smalltalk">| index vowels |</syntaxhighlight>

declares two variables: index and vowels. All variables are initialized. Variables are initialized to nil except the indexed variables of Strings, which are initialized to the null character or ByteArrays which are initialized to 0.