University of Central Florida (UCF) EGN3211 Engineering Analysis and Computation Final Practice Exam

When a variable is declared with a certain case in programming languages that are case-sensitive, such as C, C++, Java, or Python, it must be referenced with the exact same case throughout the code. This means if a variable is declared as "myVariable," attempting to reference it as "myvariable," "MYVARIABLE," or any other variation of case will result in an error.

The reason for this behavior is that the programming language treats identifiers with different cases as completely separate entities. Each unique combination of upper and lower case letters is treated as a distinct identifier. Therefore, if a variable is referenced incorrectly in terms of capitalization, the compiler or interpreter will not recognize it and will raise a compile-time error, indicating that that specific variable has not been declared or defined.

This is fundamental to understanding variable scope and naming conventions in programming, particularly in languages that enforce case sensitivity. As such, the output when trying to print a variable with a different case than declared is that it leads to a compilation error.