In addition to a data type, each variable also has a number of elements. This refers to the number of elements of the data type at each variable value. For character string data types this is the number of characters in each string. (A variable value consists of the entire character string.) The character string can be thought of as an array of characters. For non-character string data types, this must always be one (1). An array of elements per variable value is not allowed for non-character string data types.