DATA Statement for Structures

DATA Statement for Structures

A structure is a group of internal fields in a program. To declare a structure, you use the DATA statement and mark the beginning and the end of the group of fields with BEGIN OF and END OF. The syntax is as follows:

Syntax

DATA: BEGIN OF <fstring>,
<component declaration>,
..............
END OF <fstring>.

These statements define a structure <fstring>.

In <component declaration>, you declare the component fields by specifying the length, type, and, if necessary, the start value or number of decimal digits, as explained in The Basic Form of the DATA Statement.

You address the individual components in structures by using the name of the structure as a prefix and joining it to the component with a hyphen: <fstring>-<component>.

The components of a structure can have different data types. Since fields of type I or F are aligned (see Aligning Data Objects), the system inserts empty filler fields between the components, if necessary. Structures are sometimes also called records.

DATA: BEGIN OF ADDRESS,
NAME(20) TYPE C,
STREET(20) TYPE C,
NUMBER TYPE P,
POSTCODE(5) TYPE N,
CITY(20) TYPE C,
END OF ADDRESS.

This example defines a field string ADDRESS of length 73. The components can be addressed by ADDRESS-NAME, ADDRESS-STREET, and so on.

You can group the declaration of long structures in include programs (see INCLUDE Programs). However, if you use the data structures frequently, it is preferable to store them in the ABAP Dictionary. For further information about search helps, see the online documentation for the ABAP Dictionary.