De interface van VDS Renaissance is in meerdere talen beschikbaar. De officiële documentatie wordt in het Engels onderhouden om één consistente en altijd actuele referentie te garanderen.

Variables

Variables are named locations in memory which can be used by a script to store data.

Variables in the DialogScript language are untyped. Data is stored in them using the printable representation of the data; thus DialogScript variables are equivalent to text strings in many other programming languages. Where a command or a function requires a particular type of argument, such as a number, the text string supplied to it must represent a valid value of that type, or an error will occur.

There are 35 standard or local variables. Standard variable names start with % followed by the character 1 to 9 or A to Z (for example: %1, %M.)

DialogScript also allows you to have up to 4032 [VDS6] global variables. Global variable names start with %%, then a letter, then alphanumerics plus underscores (for example: %%my_variable_1.) There is no limit on the length of the variable name.

[VDS7] The long name of a global variable (the %%name form) may use Unicode (UTF-8) characters, so variables can be named in any language — for example %%東京, %%Élève or %%año. The first character must be a letter, an underscore or a Unicode letter (not a digit). The single-character registers %A..%Z and %0..%9 remain ASCII (they are fixed slots, not names). The ASCII part of a name is case-insensitive (%%Total = %%TOTAL); accented or non-Latin letters are currently case-sensitive (%%Élève is not the same as %%élève). The script file must be saved as UTF-8.

When a program starts, the local variables %1 to %9 are preloaded with any arguments that were supplied on the command line used to start the program. These variables may be reused by the program. The special variable %0 contains the full pathname of the script or program. This variable cannot be assigned to.

The distinction between global and local variables becomes apparent only if you define your own commands or functions in the program. When you enter a user defined command or function, it has its own brand new set of local variables %1 .. %Z, and the variables %1 .. %9 are preloaded with the arguments to the command or function. The variables %1 .. %Z in the main program cannot be accessed from within the user defined command or function. However, the global variables may be accessed anywhere in the program (hence the use of the term "global".)

Note: Because the symbol % is used to identify variables (and the @ symbol to identify functions) you cannot use these symbols in a string of text. Double quotes can be used to enclose text containing these symbols, to prevent them from being interpreted as variables or function names, like this:

INFO Email address:@tab()%N"@dialogscript.com"