SAP ABAP - Strings

Strings, which are widely used in ABAP programming, are a sequence of characters.

We use data type C variables for holding alphanumeric characters, with a minimum of 1 character and a maximum of 65,535 characters. By default, these are aligned to the left.

Creating Strings

The following declaration and initialization creates a string consisting of the word 'Hello'. The size of the string is exactly the number of characters in the word 'Hello'.

Data my_Char(5) VALUE 'Hello'.

Following program is an example of creating strings.

REPORT YT_SEP_15. 
DATA my_Char(5) VALUE 'Hello'. 
Write my_Char.

The above code produces the following output −

Hello

String Length

In order to find the length of character strings, we can use STRLEN statement. The STRLEN () function returns the number of characters contained in the string.

Example

REPORT YT_SEP_15. 
DATA: title_1(10) VALUE 'Tutorials',
      length_1 TYPE I. 
	
length_1 = STRLEN( title_1 ). 
Write: / 'The Length of the Title is:', length_1.

The above code produces the following output −

The Length of the Title is: 9

ABAP supports a wide range of statements that manipulate strings.

S.No. Statement & Purpose
1

CONCATENATE

Two strings are joined to form a third string.
2

CONDENSE

This statement deletes the space characters.
3

STRLEN

Used to find the length of a field.
4

REPLACE

Used to make replacements in characters.
5

SEARCH

To run searches in character strings.
6

SHIFT

Used to move the contents of a string left or right.
7

SPLIT

Used to split the contents of a field into two or more fields.

The following example makes use of some of the above mentioned statements −

Example

REPORT YT_SEP_15. 
DATA: title_1(10) VALUE 'Tutorials', 
      title_2(10) VALUE 'Point',
      spaced_title(30) VALUE 'Tutorials  Point  Limited',
      sep,
      dest1(30),
      dest2(30).
	
CONCATENATE title_1 title_2 INTO dest1. 
Write: / 'Concatenation:', dest1. 

CONCATENATE title_1 title_2 INTO dest2 SEPARATED BY sep. 
Write: / 'Concatenation with Space:', dest2. 

CONDENSE spaced_title.
Write: / 'Condense with Gaps:', spaced_title. 

CONDENSE spaced_title NO-GAPS. 
Write: / 'Condense with No Gaps:', spaced_title.

The above code produces the following output −

Concatenation: TutorialsPoint 
Concatenation with Space: Tutorials Point 
Condense with Gaps: Tutorials Point Limited 
Condense with No Gaps: TutorialsPointLimited

Note −

  • In case of Concatenation, the ‘sep’ inserts a space in between the fields.

  • The CONDENSE statement removes blank spaces between the fields, but leaving only 1 character’s space.

  • ‘NO-GAPS’ is an optional addition to the CONDENSE statement that removes all spaces.

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