Type system

The basic type of data in Pine is a list of values, named series. Examples of built-in series variables are: open, high, low, close, volume. The size of these vectors are equal to the quantity of available bars based on the current ticker and timeframe (resolution). The series may contain numbers or a special value na (meaning that value is not available, further information about na values can be found here). Any expression that contains a series variable will be treated as a series itself. For example:

a = open + close // addition of two series
b = high / 2     // division of a series variable
                 // to the integer literal constant (b will be a
                 // series)
c = close[1]     // Referring to the previous ``close`` value

Note

The operator [] also returns a value of a series type.

Pine has two types to represent numbers: integer and float. The result of an arithmetical expression containing only numbers will be a number itself.

There is a string type which is used for the indicators names, inputs, line graphs, names of tickers, resolutions, trade sessions, etc.

Also Pine has a bool type. There are two built-in constants: true and false.

And the last basic type is color. Apart from configuring a color value directly with a literal (in hexadecimal format), in the language there are more convenient, built-in variables of the type color. For basic colors there are: black, silver, gray, white, maroon, red, purple, fuchsia, green, lime, olive, yellow, navy, blue, teal, aqua, orange. It is possible to change transparency of the color using build-in function color.

A few function annotations (in particular plot and hline) return values which represent objects created on the chart. The function plot returns an object of the type plot, represented as a line or diagram on the chart. The function hline returns an object of the type hline, represented as a horizontal line. These objects can be passed to the fill function to color the area in between them.

Finally, there is also a void type in Pine Script. Some functions with side effect return void result. For example a strategy.entry.

Type cast rules

In the following picture arrow means ability to cast one type to another. For example NotAvailable type (type of the na variable), can be cast to any of color, integer, float or series types. But color can only be casted to color series type.

Note

Pine type system was changed in version 3. See Release notes. See also type casts graph for version 2: