How do you rename a public variable and keep object references/values?

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1

Whenever I rename a public variable, I lose all values/references of that variable in all objects with that component.

What’s the unity way to rename public variables? I guess it’s not with the IDE (unless monodevelop doesn’t have this problem, I’m using visual studio).

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2

I found a solution that’s still quite tedious for simply renaming a variable but for as often as one needs to rename a variable it’s worth it and works perfectly.

I found the attribute [FormerlySerializedAs(“yourVariablesPreviousName”)] in the UnityEngine.Serialization namespace.

  1. Place the attribute before the variable you wish to rename.

  2. Rename the variable and save changes.

  3. Switch to the inspector, wait for the name to change, it will have reserialized with the new name and keep all values and references.

  4. Remove the attribute (probably optional).

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