# Template variable name conventions
In templates.php, you can assign variables to $variables['whatever']...
node
for a node, $variables['whatever'] become $whatever under the node template
page
for a page, $variables['whatever'] becomes $page['whatever']
$variables
built by drupal during a page request. all the modules have the ability to add to and alter these. the last thing that happens before rendering is the theme_alter and theme_preprocess functions fire, giving a theme a last change to change these
$GLOBAL
a set of variables that once defined will live throughout the rest of the process, and be available to everything. be careful -- name conflicts and memory badness are a problem here!!! Also makes for hard-to-debug code