I am havng an issue here
A subpatcher with two arrays called $0-regina and $0-felina for locality
I can switch between the tables by using float $0 and then into set message "$1-felina" "$1-regina"
The issue however , once outside the subpatcher , I can not send color and width data to the tables using a send module called "$0-regina" , "$0-felina"
Inside the patcher it works
Help appreciated
Here's the subpatcher

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Insert Code Here

A sub-patch inherits the $0 value (actually inherits all arguments) from the patch that it is in... and that would work correctly.
So I assume that your "subpatcher" is an abstraction (another patch) that you have put in your main patch. The two patches will have a different value for $0 and the messages are going to the wrong address. Getting a $0 value into a parent patch can be awkward.

You could use the $0 value from the main patch by creating [subpatcher $0] and then using $1 in the subpatcher for the array names.
But to differentiate each [subpatcher] you need to give them an argument so that you can use it multiple times...... [subpatcher 1], [subpatcher 2]....... .... you can also have just one [subpatcher $0]..

David.

Be aware of naming conventions:

A subpatch is this: [pd sub]

An abstraction is this: [abstraction] (calling another .pd file as object)

Both, abstraction and subpatch, can have graph-on-parent.

An abstraction may have arguments, such as [abstraction 1 2 3 hello]

A subpatch can not have arguments.

$0 in a subpatch is same as in it's parent patch.
$0 of an abstraction is unique.

For getting $0 of the parent patch inside of an abstraction, you can handle it as agrument, such as [abstraction $0]
and poll it inside the abstraction with $1 (first argument).

Getting $0 of an abstraction outside of the abstraction, at it's parent patch for example, is one of Pd's issues.

One way to solve this is

inside the abstraction:

[loadbang]
|
[f $0]
|
[outlet]

more on naming conventions, "subpatcher" is a MAX term... we don't use that in Pd land... it's either an abstraction or a subpatch

Sorry , if it was not clear .
It was indeed an abstraction ( calling another pd patch ) and not a subpatch

@gentleclockdivider you want to send to the abstraction, so I would say $0 inside the abstraction is fundamentally the wrong thing to use in that case.
Instead, pass in the name prefix you want to use from the parent as an argument. Then you can access it in the abstraction as $1
in parent create abstraction as e.g.: [myAbstraction somePrefix]
array names in abstraction: $1-regina, $1-felina
send names in parent: somePrefix-regina, somePrefix-felina

of course the other way to go is to send the abstraction's $0 value to an outlet and receive it in the parent. But that's less clean imo.
I guess this is just an illustration on how to avoid the issues that arise passing $0 around that david was mentioning

what I do, and since you're using plugdata you can, is I use my [else/dollsym] object in abstractions to get the $0 value from the parent.

Another possibility is to let the abstraction take configuration message.