TYPES - TABLE OF
Short Reference
ABAP Syntax_5 TYPES dtype { {TYPE
tabkind OF [REF TO] type}
| {LIKE tabkind OF dobj} }
[ tabkeys ]
[INITIAL SIZE n].
ABAP_ADDITION:
... INITIAL SIZE n
What does it do? This statement defines a table type dtype with a
specific row type, a table category tabkind , and table keys
tabkeys .
The row type is determined by entering the data type type
after TYPE and data type dobj after LIKE :
type can be a non-generic data type from ABAP Dictionary, a
non-generic public data type of a public data type or global class, a
non-generic data type local to a program, or any ABAP type from the
table of predefined ABAP types .
The generic ABAP types c , n , p , and x are
implicitly extended to the standard length without
decimal places from the table of
predefined ABAP types.
If the addition REF TO is specified before type or
dobj , then the row type is a reference type. The information
specified in section reference types can
then be entered for type and dobj .
The same applies to dobj as to
TYPES ... LIKE .
Latest notes: The use of the addition OCCURS
for defining table types is obsolete.
ABAP_ADDITION ... INITIAL SIZE n
What does it do? The optional addition INITIAL SIZE has two
meanings:
Note for the internal memory management of internal tables
Internal tables are stored in the memory block by block. After the
optional addition INITIAL SIZE , you can specify a number of rows
n directly as a positive number without sign or as a numeric
constant to notify the system of the size of the initial block in the me
mory (reserved by the system for an internal table of the table type).
By default, and if n is specified as 0, the system allocates a
suitable initial memory area automatically.
If the initial memory area is not large enough, further blocks are
created using a duplicate strategy until a maximum size is reached.
After this, all blocks are created with a constant size between eight
and 16 KB .
If the value of n causes the initial blocks to become too big,
the size of the initial memory area is also defined by the system.
Size of Rankings
To create a ranking in the internal table using the SORTED BY
addition to the APPEND statement, specify a
value greater than 0 after INITIAL SIZE and this determines the
size of the ranking.
ABAP_PGL Modify the initial memory
requirements only for nested tables
Latest notes: You are advised to specify the initial memory requirements
only when the number of entries in the table has already been specified
and the initial main memory requirement has an adequate value. This can
be especially important for internal tables that are components of table
types and only contain a few rows.
Instead of APPEND SORTED BY , the statement SORT must be
used so that the INITIAL SIZE addition is no longer required
here.
Example ABAP Coding Defines a non-generic sorted table type. The row type
corresponds to the structure of the database table SPFLI . Two key
fields are defined for the primary table key.
TYPES spfli_sort TYPE SORTED TABLE OF spfli
WITH UNIQUE KEY carrid connid.
Documentation extract taken from SAP system, � Copyright SAP AG. All rights reserved