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SAP NEWS-610-STRINGS documentation, setup help and example usage
Character Strings in Release 6.10
The following new functions are available for character strings in Release 6.10:
1 Establish the length and number of characters
2 New statements FIND and REPLACE
3 Faster access to strings
4 Support for strings in the database
5 Definition of string constants
6 Introduction of text string literals
ABAP_MODIFICATION_1 Establishing the length and number of characters
The function charlen provides the length of the first character of a string or of a character-like field.
You can use numofchar to obtain the number of characters in a string or a character-type field.
dbmaxlen provides the maximum length of the string as stored in ABAP Dictionary .
ABAP_MODIFICATION_2 New statements FIND and REPLACE
There is a new statement, FIND , for searching in character strings. This replaces the SEARCH
command. For replacing characters in character strings, the statement REPLACE has been extended to include position-based replacements.
ABAP_MODIFICATION_3 Faster access to strings
Offset/length access is now the fastest way to process a string character by character. This technique is also faster than searching in a field of type C that is assigned to a field symbol.
ABAP_MODIFICATION_4 Support for strings in the database
From Release 6.10, character strings and binary data can be stored in database columns of types STRING or RAWSTRING . The system differentiates between short and long strings:
Short strings consist of a maximum of 256 characters, do not have trailing blanks, and can be compared on the database.
Long strings can be of any length and do have trailing blanks; however they cannot be compared on the database.
When working with strings, some restrictions have to be observed. Further details are available here .
ABAP_MODIFICATION_5 Defining string constants
Strings can now also be defined as constants and can be given an initial value using the keyword VALUE .
DATA str2 TYPE string VALUE 'XYZ'.
str2 = str1.
str1 = str2. "Syntax error
WRITE: / str1, str2.
ABAP_MODIFICATION_6 Introduction of text string literals
Text string literals are enclosed by backquotes in the form str = `ABC` . String literals are of data type STRING
and trailing blanks are not ignored, unlike in text field literals.
DATA: str1 TYPE string VALUE 'ABC ',
str2 TYPE string VALUE `ABC `,
cnt1 TYPE i,
cnt2 TYPE i.
cnt1 = strlen( str1 ).
cnt2 = strlen( str2 ).
WRITE: / cnt1, cnt2.
The length for the string str1 is cnt1 = 3 and the length for the string str2 is cnt2 = 5.
Documentation extract taken from SAP system, � Copyright SAP AG. All rights reserved
