In SmileBASIC, DIM is the exact same as VAR in every way, in other versions of the BASIC programming language, DIM is how you create an array, so by convention we use DIM only for arrays But it's up to you DIM A$[5] A$[0]="1st item" A$[1]="2nd item" A$[2]="3rd item" A$[3]="4th item" A$[4]="5th item" Then if you ever want to know what you had inside the third array item PRINT A$[2] 'print 3rd Item