Rules About Subscripts
Local variables, process-private variables, and global variables can all take subscripts. In all cases, note the following points:
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A subscript can be a numeric or a string. It can include any characters, including Unicode characters. Valid numeric subscripts include positive and negative numbers, zero, and fractional numbers.
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The empty string ("") is not a valid subscript.
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Subscript values are case-sensitive.
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Any numeric subscript is converted to canonical form. Thus, for example, the global nodes ^a(7), ^a(007), ^a(7.000), and ^a(7.) are all the same because the subscript is actually the same in all cases.
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A string subscript is not converted to canonical form. Thus, for example, ^a("7"), ^a("007"), ^a("7.000"), and ^a("7.") are all different global nodes because these subscripts are all different. Also, ^a("7") and ^a(7) both refer to the same global node, because these subscripts are the same.
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There are limits on the length of a subscript and on the number of subscript levels. See Subscript Limits.
Also see General System Limits.
Lock name subscripts follow the same conventions as variable subscripts.
You can use the $QSUBSCRIPT function to return the components (name and subscripts) of a specified variable, or the $QLENGTH function to return the number of subscript levels.
