ARTICLE
Access to Internal Tables
When internal tables are read, either the entire table or
table body can be accessed, or individual
rows.
The table body is read using special statements such as
SORT , but can also be accessed using
general statements like assignments .
Individual rows are accessed using
special statements such as READ
TABLE , LOOP AT ,
MODIFY .
table expressions itab[ ... ] .
When individual rows are read, either a work
area is used into which the row content is read or from which it is
modified, or a row is associated with a
field symbol or a data
reference variable and these are used to access the row directly.
The table category and the table keys are significant when internal
tables are edited:
The primary table index (which
always exists) can be used to access index
tables ( standard tables and
sorted tables ).
Primary table keys can be used for
optimized access to sorted tables and
hashed tables .
A secondary table index can be
used to access any tables with a sorted
secondary table index .
The secondary table key can be
used for optimized access to any tables with a secondary
sorted key or
hash key . Notes
Notes
If the row type of internal tables contains
object reference variables as
the components comp , the attributes attr of the object to
which the reference points can be used as key values for reading,
sorting, and modifying table rows. This is always possible for
statements that address individual components
of the table.
The content of the primary table key cannot be changed for any writes to
individual rows of sorted tables and
hashed tables .
Documentation extract taken from SAP system, � Copyright SAP AG. All rights reserved
