Question

In Wikipedia, it explains the data types of the data fields as shown below:

Additionally, each field may be either fixed or variable length. If variable, the length of the field will be preceded by a length indicator.

So according to that table, what would the following types mean? I couldn’t fully understand it.

1. n ..19

2. n 10

Answer 1

1. means the field is variable and can contain a value up-to 19 chars.
2. i didn’t see this definition (with a space) so I guess the table is mis-formatted on Wikipedia, but n10 means it is a fixed length field containing 10 chars, while n.10 means it’s a LVAR (L=one digit, LL=2 digits etc.) field containing up-to 10 chars.