topic Re: STRINGS in Application Development and Automation Discussions

STRINGS

Former Member — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:39:31 GMT

Hi guys,

I have a requirement wherein i need to capture the first 4 characters of a field into another variable.

For eg i have a field ' ABC' whose data contents are 200704 , 200606 , 200507...etc

I need the values 2007 , 2006 , 2005 from tha above field in the work area of another internal table.

How do i go about this??

Thanks and regards,

Frank.

Re: STRINGS

Former Member — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:42:11 GMT

Hi frank,

field = '200712'.
write field(4).    "will write 2007

rgs

Re: STRINGS

Former Member — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:44:00 GMT

Hi ,

Use offset(length)

check the below code

loop at itab1.

itad2-fields = itab1-abc+0(4).

append itab2.

endloop.

<b>Reward points if usefull.</b>

Regards,

Siva chalasani.

Re: STRINGS

Former Member — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:44:19 GMT

i am not hardcoding the values in the field..... i am fetching the field values from a database table into an internal table.

Re: STRINGS

Former Member — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:45:19 GMT

write ABC(4) to <variable>

Re: STRINGS

Former Member — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:47:34 GMT

Hi,

extract first the entire value and after that you process on internal table.

You can't modify the value at extraction time.

rgs

Re: STRINGS

Former Member — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:50:18 GMT

select substr(abc,1,4) from ztable into table itab.

Re: STRINGS

Former Member — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:06:58 GMT

Hi Frank,

After fetching the data from Database table, when you are moving to internal table just offset the value for the first 4 characters and append it to internal table.

Regards,

Satish

Re: STRINGS

matt — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:12:45 GMT

Offsets and lengths is a bad way to program. Check out the programming concept of "Magic Numbers".

Far better to define a structure. Assume you've got your data into a variable type n length 6, called l_per, and you're wanting to get into a variable type n length 4, called l_year.

TYPES: BEGIN OF period type,
        yyyy TYPE n,
        mm   TYPE n,
       END OF period_type.

DATA: l_per_tmp TYPE period_type. 

l_per_tmp = l_per.
l_year = l_per-yyyy.

This may seem long winded, but it is absolutely clear what the program is doing, and no-one needs to scratch their head over what the number 4 means, nor do they need to know the internal structure of l_per to understand the program.

Clarity is good. Ambiguity is bad. And most of the cost of a program is in maintenance, not development.

matt