Question on the ASSIGN keyword

[former_member785286]

Hello,

I had a question regarding the syntax of the ASSIGN keyword. What is the difference between ASSIGN X TO Y and ASSIGN X->* TO Y? I noticed that this allowed the passage of a TYPE REF TO DATA variable to a STANDARD TABLE field symbol i had, but what exactly does the ->* do?

[lenapadeken]

Hi edisnord,

->* is a dereferencing operator. It means follow the pointer (->) and show what's behind (*). In your case you're having a dereferenced data reference X that is assigned to Y. This syntax might help:

DATA X TYPE REF TO data.
CREATE DATA X TYPE type.
ASSIGN X->* TO FIELD-SYMBOL(<Y>).

You can find more information here ASSIGN, dynamic_dobj - ABAP Keyword Documentation (sap.com) and here Dereferencing Operator - ABAP Keyword Documentation (sap.com).

Best regards,

Lena

[kilian_kilger]

Note than in newer ABAP releases you can use X->* directly in most places in ABAP without using the ASSIGN command.

[former_member785286]

Thanks Lena and Kilian, your comments were very informative 🙂