Literals 

Literals are unnamed data objects that you create within the source code of a program. They are fully defined by their value. You cannot change the value of a literal. There are two types of literals: numeric and text.

Number literals

Numeric literals are sequences of digits which may contain a plus or minus sign. They can represent any number within the valid range for the predefined ABAP type P with length 16, that is, a number of up to 31 digits plus a plus or minus sign. Numeric literals between -231+1 and 2 31-1 have the predefined ABAP type I. All other numeric literals have type P without decimal places. Numeric literals of up to 15 digits (plus their plus or minus sign) have a field length of 8 bytes, all others have a field length of 16 bytes.

Examples of numeric literals:

123
-93
+456

Numeric literals in ABAP statements:

DATA number TYPE i VALUE -1234 .

WRITE 6789 .

MOVE 100 TO number.

If you want to use non-integer values or a longer number, you must use a text literal (data type C). The text literal in this case must have the format

'[<mantissa>][E][<exponent>]'

for floating point numbers. When you use text literals of this kind in ABAP statements, the system converts them into the corresponding numeric data type.

Examples of text literals that can be converted into numeric types:

'12345678901234567890'
'+0.58498'
'-8473.67'
'-12.34567'
'-765E-04'
'1234E5'
'+12E+23'
'+12.3E-4'
'1E160'

Text literals

Text literals are sequences of alphanumeric characters in the source code of an ABAP program enclosed in single quotation marks. They always have the predefined ABAP type C. The field length is determined by the number of characters.

Examples of text literals

'Antony Smith'
'69190 Walldorf'

Text literals can be up to 255 characters long. A text literal is always at least one character long. Entering '' is the equivalent of ' '. If you want to enter a text literal in the ABAP Editor that is longer than a single editor line, ABAP syntax allows you to enter several literals and link them using the & character. If a text literal contains a quotation mark, you must repeat it to enable the system to recognize the contents as a text literal and not as the end of the literal.

WRITE: / 'This is John''s bicycle'.

This statement generates the following output:

This is John's bicycle