In C, local variables exist inside of a function and contain the values like this:

void main(){
    int a = 5;
    int b = 9;
}

In the Gforth manual, they describe the local variables like this:

: swap { a b -- b a }
  b a ;
1 2 swap .s 2drop

but it seems like a function which is taking two arguments, a and b.

Another tutorial on the Forth language shows a variable like this:

variable a
3 a !    ( ! to store the value )

So, which one is correct?