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# identifier

«identifier» in Mova's school dictionary: **A name, number, label or sign that shows exactly who or…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

noun (an identifier, identifiers)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A name, number, label or sign that shows exactly who or what something is. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/#m1)

2) (computing) A name given to something in a program, such as a variable or function name, so the computer can tell them apart. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In computing lessons, identifiers are the names you give variables, like «score» or «lives»; they usually cannot have spaces or start with a number. In everyday life, a barcode, a passport number, a username or a pupil number is an identifier. In science, features of a plant can act as identifiers. Phrases: unique identifier, user identifier, a variable identifier.

### examples

- Each library book has a barcode as its identifier. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/#x1)
- In Scratch we used «score» as the identifier for our variable. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/#x2)
- Your username is an identifier, but your password must stay secret. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/#x3)
- A unique identifier means no two things share it. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/#x4)
- The spots on its back are a good identifier for this ladybird. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/#x5)
- The program gave an error because the identifier had a space in it. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/#x6)

### note

Countable noun. Verb: «identify»; «identifier» is the thing that identifies. A unique identifier belongs to just one thing; a name like «Sam» is not unique, but a passport number is. In programming, identifiers are case sensitive in many languages: «Score» and «score» can be different.

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «identifier» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/identifier/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.