SAP LENGTH FUNCTIONS documentation, setup help and example usage

ARTICLE

charlen , dbmaxlen , numofchar , strlen - Length Functions
These length functions have an unnamed character-like argument.

Syntax
... func( arg ) ...

Effect
The following table shows the length functions with one unnamed argument. The arguments arg of all length functions except
dbmaxlen are character-like expression positions . The argument of dbmaxlen is a character-like functional operand position . The return code has the type i for all length functions.
Function func Return Value
ABAP_KEY charlen Length of first character of arg in the code page used: 1 for non-Unicode single-byte code; 1 or 2 for non-Unicode double-byte code ; 1 for Unicode with simple Unicode character; 2 for Unicode with surrogates ;
ABAP_KEY dbmaxlen Maximum length of a string defined in ABAP Dictionary ( RAWSTRING , SSTRING , STRING ). If the string is unrestricted, the constant abap_max_db_string_ln or abap_max_db_rawstring_ln from the
type group ABAP is returned. The latter is also returned for the predefined ABAP types string and xstring .
ABAP_KEY numofchar Number of characters in arg , where closing blanks are not counted in data objects with fixed lengths or in data objects with the type string . If a non-Unicode double-byte code is used, a character that uses two bytes is only counted once.
ABAP_KEY strlen Number of characters in arg , where closing blanks in data objects with fixed lengths are not counted. They are counted though in data objects with the type string . If a non-Unicode double-byte code is used, a character that uses two bytes is counted twice. The argument can be byte-like outside Unicode programs.

Note
The functions described here are some of the functions that can be used in the obsolete extended functional operand positions , even if their argument is a single data object.