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SAP ABAP - Data Types

This document discusses data types in SAP ABAP. It describes elementary data types like byte, text, integer, floating point, packed number, and text string. It also discusses complex data types like structures and tables. Structures group elementary types together, while tables are like arrays that can contain elementary, complex, or reference types and be accessed by key and access method. The document provides examples of using different data types like character, string, and date in ABAP code.

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Chandu Chandrakanth
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140 views3 pages

SAP ABAP - Data Types

This document discusses data types in SAP ABAP. It describes elementary data types like byte, text, integer, floating point, packed number, and text string. It also discusses complex data types like structures and tables. Structures group elementary types together, while tables are like arrays that can contain elementary, complex, or reference types and be accessed by key and access method. The document provides examples of using different data types like character, string, and date in ABAP code.

Uploaded by

Chandu Chandrakanth
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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7/31/22, 7:58 PM SAP ABAP - Data Types

SAP ABAP - Data Types

While programming in ABAP, we need to use a variety of variables to store various information.
Variables are nothing but reserved memory locations to store values. This means that when you
create a variable you reserve some space in memory. You may like to store information of various
data types like character, integer, floating point, etc. Based on the data type of a variable, the
operating system allocates memory and decides what can be stored in the reserved memory.

Elementary Data Types


ABAP offers the programmer a rich assortment of fixed length as well as variable length data
types. Following table lists down ABAP elementary data types −

Type Keyword

Byte field X

Text field C

Integer I

Floating point F

Packed number P

Text string STRING

Some of the fields and numbers can be modified using one or more names as the following −

byte
numeric
character-like

The following table shows the data type, how much memory it takes to store the value in memory,
and the minimum and maximum value that could be stored in such type of variables.

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7/31/22, 7:58 PM SAP ABAP - Data Types

Type Typical Length Typical Range

X 1 byte Any byte values (00 to FF)

C 1 character 1 to 65535

N (numeric text filed) 1 character 1 to 65535

D (character-like date) 8 characters 8 characters

T (character-like time) 6 characters 6 characters

I 4 bytes -2147483648 to 2147483647

F 8 bytes 2.2250738585072014E-308 to
1.7976931348623157E+308 positive or
negative

P 8 bytes [-10^(2len -1) +1] to [+10^(2len -1) 1]


(where len = fixed length)

STRING Variable Any alphanumeric characters

XSTRING (byte string) Variable Any byte values (00 to FF)

Example
REPORT YR_SEP_12.

DATA text_line TYPE C LENGTH 40.

text_line = 'A Chapter on Data Types'.

Write text_line.

DATA text_string TYPE STRING.

text_string = 'A Program in ABAP'.

Write / text_string.

DATA d_date TYPE D.

d_date = SY-DATUM.

Write / d_date.

In this example, we have a character string of type C with a predefined length 40. STRING is a
data type that can be used for any character string of variable length (text strings). Type STRING
data objects should generally be used for character-like content where fixed length is not
important.

The above code produces the following output −

A Chapter on Data Types

A Program in ABAP

12092015

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7/31/22, 7:58 PM SAP ABAP - Data Types

The DATE type is used for the storage of date information and can store eight digits as shown
above.

Complex and Reference Types


The complex types are classified into  Structure types  and  Table types. In the structure types,
elementary types and structures (i.e. structure embedded in a structure) are grouped together. You
may consider only the grouping of elementary types. But you must be aware of the availability of
nesting of structures.

When the elementary types are grouped together, the data item can be accessed as a grouped
data item or the individual elementary type data items (structure fields) can be accessed. The table
types are better known as arrays in other programming languages.  Arrays  can be simple or
structure arrays. In ABAP, arrays are called internal tables and they can be declared and operated
upon in many ways when compared to other programming languages. The following table shows
the parameters according to which internal tables are characterized.

S.No. Parameter & Description

1
Line or row type

Row of an internal table can be of elementary, complex or reference type.

2
Key

Specifies a field or a group of fields as a key of an internal table that identifies the table
rows. A key contains the fields of elementary types.

3
Access method

Describes how ABAP programs access individual table entries.

Reference types are used to refer to instances of classes, interfaces, and run-time data items. The
ABAP OOP run-time type services (RTTS) enables declaration of data items at run-time.

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