Identifiers

[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*

• Must start with a letter or underscore.
• May then contain letters, digits, and underscores.
• Case-sensitive: Close, close, and CLOSE are three different names.
• No limit on length in practice (every identifier is interned once).

Examples: rsi, rsi14, _hidden, userName, MACDHist, kernelFunction.

Invalid: 20sma (starts with a digit), rsi-14 (hyphen), rsi.14 (dot).

The following names are reserved by the grammar and cannot be used as identifiers:

and         break       by          continue    else
enum        export      false       for         if
import      in          library     method      na
not         once        or          strategy    switch
true        type        var         varip       while

In addition the following names are reserved at top level because they are declaration keywords:

indicator   library   strategy   study

(Inside a function body they can appear as parameters — the restriction applies to top-level declaration targets.)

Many identifiers are owned by the standard library. Shadowing them with a = or var declaration is allowed but hides the built-in for the rest of the script:

sma(x, y) => x + y           // shadows ta.sma for bare `sma(…)` calls
plot(sma(close, 2))

The namespaced form (ta.sma) is always available regardless of shadowing. Common built-in namespaces:

• Series — open, high, low, close, volume, time, bar_index
• Namespaces — ta.*, math.*, str.*, array.*, map.*, matrix.*, input.*, request.*, strategy.*, color.*, shape.*, size.*, location.*, line.*, box.*, label.*, table.*, plot.*, hline.*, format.*, scale.*, display.*, extend.*, font.*, position.*, syminfo.*, timeframe.*, session.*, barstate.*, dayofweek.*, chart.*, currency.*, log.*

For an exhaustive list see Built-ins.

Scripts written in older major versions call many functions without their namespace. ChartScript resolves bare names only after user-function lookup, so your own sma definition still wins:

• TA globals routed to ta.*: sma, ema, rma, wma, vwma, swma, alma, hma, rsi, atr, tr, stdev, dev, variance, correlation, cci, cmo, cog, mfi, mom, roc, sar, stoch, tsi, wpr, linreg, cum, obv, accdist, highest, lowest, highestbars, lowestbars, barssince, valuewhen, crossover, crossunder, cross, rising, falling, change, pivothigh, pivotlow, percentrank, bbw, kcw, median, vwap
• Math globals routed to math.*: avg, max, min, abs, ceil, floor, round, sqrt, pow, exp, log, log10, sign, sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan, sum, todegrees, toradians
• String routed to str.*: tostring, tonumber
• Flow: iff(cond, then, else) → cond ? then : else

Legacy color names also resolve as bare identifiers (aqua, silver, red, …) and fold to the same hex as color.aqua, color.silver, color.red; a local variable named red shadows the constant.

• lowerCamelCase for variables and function parameters: kernelLength, isTrendingUp.
• UPPER_SNAKE_CASE for script-level constants: MAX_ZONES, BULL_COLOR.
• PascalCase for types and enums: type Pivot, enum Trend.
• Prefix a variable with its unit when it carries one: len, lenBars, lenPct, lenPrice.

See Style guide for the full project conventions.

• Variable declarations
• User-defined functions
• Built-ins