Variables in Puppet are marked with a dollar sign ($) character. When using variables within a manifest, it is preferred to enclose the variable within braces "${myvariable}" instead of "$myvariable". All of the facts from facter can be referenced as top scope variables (we will discuss scope in the next section). For example, the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the node may be referenced by "${::fqdn}". Variables can only contain alphabetic characters, numerals, and the underscore character (_). As a matter of style, variables should start with an alphabetic character. Never use dashes in variable names.

In the variable example explained in the There's more… section, the fully qualified domain name was referred to as ${::fqdn} rather than ${fqdn}; the double colons are how Puppet differentiates scope. The highest level scope, top scope or global, is referred to by two colons (::) at the beginning of a variable identifier. To reduce namespace collisions, always use fully scoped variable identifiers in your manifests. For a Unix user, think of top scope variables as the / (root) level. You can refer to variables using the double colon syntax similar to how you would refer to a directory by its full path. For the developer, you can think of top scope variables as global variables; however, unlike global variables, you must always refer to them with the double colon notation to guarantee that a local variable isn't obscuring the top scope variable.