While programming in ABAP, we need to use a variety of variables to store various information. Variables are nothing but reserved memory locations to store values. This means that when you create a variable you reserve some space in memory. You may like to store information of various data types like character, integer, floating point, etc. Based on the data type of a variable, the operating system allocates memory and decides what can be stored in the reserved memory.
Elementary Data Types
ABAP offers the programmer a rich assortment of fixed length as well as variable length data types. Following table lists down ABAP elementary data types −
| Type |
Keyword |
| Byte field |
X |
| Text field |
C |
| Integer |
I |
| Floating point |
F |
| Packed number |
P |
| Text string |
STRING |
Some of the fields and numbers can be modified using one or more names as the following −
- byte
- numeric
- character-like
The following table shows the data type, how much memory it takes to store the value in memory, and the minimum and maximum value that could be stored in such type of variables.
| Type |
Typical Length |
Typical Range |
| X |
1 byte |
Any byte values (00 to FF) |
| C |
1 character |
1 to 65535 |
| N (numeric text filed) |
1 character |
1 to 65535 |
| D (character-like date) |
8 characters |
8 characters |
| T (character-like time) |
6 characters |
6 characters |
| I |
4 bytes |
-2147483648 to 2147483647 |
| F |
8 bytes |
2.2250738585072014E-308 to 1.7976931348623157E+308 positive or negative |
| P |
8 bytes |
[-10^(2len -1) +1] to [+10^(2len -1) 1] (where len = fixed length) |
| STRING |
Variable |
Any alphanumeric characters |
| XSTRING (byte string) |
Variable |
Any byte values (00 to FF) |
Example
REPORT YR_SEP_12.
DATA text_line TYPE C LENGTH 40.
text_line = 'A Chapter on Data Types'.
Write text_line.
DATA text_string TYPE STRING.
text_string = 'A Program in ABAP'.
Write / text_string.
DATA d_date TYPE D<span style="color:#666600" c
