Variable Names

A legal RATS variable name has the following requirements:

•The name must begin with a letter or %.

•The only characters are letters, digits, $, % and _.

•The maximum length is sixteen characters.

The lead % is heavily used for names reserved by RATS for function and variable names (%CDF, %RSS, etc.) so we recommend avoiding that. However, lead %% names are a reasonable choice for global variable names defined by procedures that you write.

You actually can use more than sixteen characters on a name, except only the first sixteen matter. So while you can use AVGWEEKLYHOURSNONDURABLE, it will show in output as just AVGWEEKLYHOURSNO.