Flat structure or Flat character

[former_member649377]

what is the meaning of flat character in the below sentence.

"This statement sets the content of the SPA/GPA parameter specified in piduser memory to the content of the data object dobj. The ID pid must be a flat character-like field that contains no more than 20 characters and does not consist solely of blanks. pid is case-sensitive. dobj expects a flat character-like field whose binary content is passed in an unconverted format."

[gayathri_jayajeevan2]

Hi,

Flat char field is "TYPE C" field. in ur case "Field1 TYPE C LENGTH 20."

Thank you.

[former_member1716]

Mohd Ameen Bari

Can you share the code with us on this issue?

[former_member649377]

the statement is from sap documentation on set parameter and get parameter. I want to understand the context of flat in the statement.

[Sandra_Rossi]

Link: ABAP Documentation - SET PARAMETER

It refers to flat ("All elementary data types except string and xstring are flat"), elementary ("Data type of fixed or variable length that is not structured, not a table type, and not a reference type"), character-like data type ("Data type whose data objects contain characters encoded according to the current code page. The real character-like data types are text field, numeric text field, and text string. Alongside these, date type and time type are special character-like data types. The associated generic abap type is clike").

Consequently, flat character-like fields are the types C (text field), N (numeric text field), D (date type) and T (time type).