Variable names
The following rules apply to variable names:
- Each variable name must be unique; duplication is not allowed.
- Variable names can be up to 64 bytes long, and the first character
must be a letter or one of the characters @, #, or $. Subsequent characters
can be any combination of letters, numbers, nonpunctuation characters,
and a period (.). In code page mode, sixty-four bytes typically means
64 characters in single-byte languages (for example, English, French,
German, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Russian, Greek, Arabic, and Thai)
and 32 characters in double-byte languages (for example, Japanese,
Chinese, and Korean). Many string characters that only take one byte
in code page mode take two or more bytes in Unicode mode. For example,
é is one byte in code page format but is two bytes in Unicode format;
so résumé is six bytes in a code page file and eight bytes
in Unicode mode.
Note: Letters include any nonpunctuation characters used in writing ordinary words in the languages supported in the platform's character set.
- Variable names cannot contain spaces.
- A # character in the first position of a variable name defines a scratch variable. You can only create scratch variables with command syntax. You cannot specify a # as the first character of a variable in dialog boxes that create new variables.
- A $ sign in the first position indicates that the variable is a system variable. The $ sign is not allowed as the initial character of a user-defined variable.
- The period, the underscore, and the characters $, #, and @ can be used within variable names. For example, A._$@#1 is a valid variable name.
- Variable names ending with a period should be avoided, since the period may be interpreted as a command terminator. You can only create variables that end with a period in command syntax. You cannot create variables that end with a period in dialog boxes that create new variables.
- Variable names ending in underscores should be avoided, since such names may conflict with names of variables automatically created by commands and procedures.
- Reserved keywords cannot be used as variable names. Reserved keywords are ALL, AND, BY, EQ, GE, GT, LE, LT, NE, NOT, OR, TO, and WITH.
- Variable names can be defined with any mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters, and case is preserved for display purposes.
- When long variable names need to wrap onto multiple lines in output, lines are broken at underscores, periods, and points where content changes from lower case to upper case.