Notation in harmonic series

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I was looking at an answer of the post Awfully sophisticated proofs for simple facts, where the topic was the series $\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{n} $, and I found this notation: $$ f_n := \frac{1}{n} 1_{[0,n]}$$

What does that $1$ with that subindex mean?
And, when should I use that notation?