ABAP Frequently Asked Questions

Here you will find some common questions about ABAP/4 and developments. Many of the questions and answers are cut from the SAP R/3 LIST.

Question: How do I use variables in the FORMAT command.
Answer:
DATA COLORID TYPE I VALUE 4.
FORMAT INTENSIFIED ON COLOR = COLORID.

Question:
When using CALL ‘SYSTEM’ id ‘COMMAND’ field unix-command
How does one capture the results of the command? For example, it the
unix-command were the date?
Answer:
You capture the results in the table e.g TABL, like this
DATA: BEGIN OF TABL OCCURS 0,
LINE(560),
END OF TABL.

REFRESH TABL.
CALL ‘SYSTEM’ ID ‘COMMAND’ FIELD PARCOM_LOC
ID ‘TAB’ FIELD TABL-*SYS*.

Question:
I am working on a program that needs to show number of days between 2
dates. When I scanned the function library, I only found a function to
give you the number of years between dates. I can probably code this
in ABAP but does anyone know if a function exists to do this.

Answer:
I wrote this example for you. I think this is what you need.
DATA: DATE_1 LIKE SY-DATUM
,DATE_2 LIKE SY-DATUM.
DATA DAYS TYPE I.

DATE_1 = SY-DATUM.
DATE_2 = SY-DATUM + 65.
DAYS = DATE_2 – DATE_1.
WRITE:/ ‘DATE_2=’,DATE_2,’DATE_1=’,DATE_1,’DAYS=’,DAYS.

Run this code and then you will understand.

Question:
How do I concatenate two strings in Abap/4?

Answer:
For all SAP Versions
STR_LENGTH = STRLEN( STRING1 ).
MOVE STRING1 TO STRING3.
WRITE STRING2 TO STRING3+STR_LENGTH.

For SAP Version 3.0 choose:
CONCATENATE STRING1 STRING2 INTO STRING3.
If you want a space between both fields:
CONCATENATE STRING1 STRING2 INTO STRING3 SEPARATED BY ‘ ‘.
For SAP Version 2.2 choose Functions:
STRING_CONCATENATE for 2 Strings and
STRING_CONCATENATE_3 for 3 Strings.

Question:
Has anyone been successful in suppressing the selection screen that is automatically displayed when using logical data bases. I want to run a job in the background using a logical database and I do not want the user prompted for the parameters. I want to pass the parameters in the program.

Answer:
Try using the SUBMIT rep USING SELECTION-SET ‘variant’ WITH ….command in the report to pass the variant thru the program

Question:
I would like to know how to execute from ABAP code an external Unix program and
check for a return code ?
Answer:
There are different ways to this:
(1) OPEN DATASET FOR OUTPUT ‘unix command’
CLOSE DATASET
This command executes the unix command and writes the output into
Look into OSS Note 9391.
(2) or try the following program but unfortunately the command CALL SYSTEM is
not supported by SAP. If you are on R/3 2.1 – 2.2x you can get some idea’s from the
program SAPMSOS0.

REPORT ZUNIXCOM .

DATA: U_COMMAND(200).
* Table for system messages
DATA: BEGIN OF RT OCCURS 100 ,
LINE(100) ,
END OF RT .

START-OF-SELECTION .

MOVE ‘unix command’ to U_COMMAND .
REFRESH RT.
CALL ‘SYSTEM’ ID ‘COMMAND’ FIELD U_COMMAND
ID ‘TAB’ FIELD RT-*SYS* .
LOOP AT RT.
WRITE : / RT-LINE .
ENDLOOP.
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