Typed variable declaration in REPL

[filmackay]

I noticed that these declarations don't work in REPL (taken from doco):

julia> x::Int8        # a variable by itself
ERROR: x not defined

julia> x::Int8 = 10   # as the left-hand side of an assignment
ERROR: x not defined

How should one declare a variable/value of a given type in REPL?

[ihnorton]

"In value contexts, such as f(x::Int8), the :: is a type assertion again and not a declaration. Note that these declarations cannot be used in global scope currently, in the REPL, since Julia does not yet have constant-type globals."

http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/types/#type-declarations

[ihnorton]

see also #964