SAP STRING PROCESSING STATEMENTS documentation, setup help and example usage

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Statements for Character String and Byte String Processing
The following table shows the keywords for character string and byte string processing and the processes supported by these statements.
Key Word Character String Processing Byte String Processing
CONCATENATE XX
FIND XX
REPLACE XX
SHIFT XX
SPLIT XX
CONDENSE X-
CONVERT TEXT X-
OVERLAY X-
TRANSLATE X-
WRITE TO X-

SET BIT -X
GET BIT -X
There is a clear distinction between character string processing and byte string processing. Each of the keywords in the table that supports both character string and byte string processing has the following optional addition:
... IN {CHARACTER|BYTE} MODE ...
This addition defines which processing is used. If this addition is not specified, character string processing is used in these statements. In non-Unicode programs, flat structures and byte strings can also be handled like character strings (implicit
casting ). All statements that can perform explicit byte string processing produce the correct result in a non-Unicode system when accessing byte strings, even if IN BYTE MODE is not specified, as long as the character-like interpretation of the binary content is not significant. Character string processing of byte strings and the statements GET BIT and SET BIT are not possible for character strings in Unicode programs.

Note
In addition to the statements shown here, there is also a set of obsolete statements for character string and byte string processing .