String Commands in ABAP

Below are some of the common and handy commands for manipulating strings in ABAP.

CONCATENATE

To join multiple strings together into one string.

DATA u(10) TYPE C VALUE 'Rust'.

DATA v(10) TYPE C VALUE 'Iron'.

DATA w(10) TYPE C VALUE 'Brown'.

DATA str(30) TYPE  C.

CONCATENATE u v w INTO str.

CONCATENATE u v w INTO str SEPARATED BY '***'.

SPLIT

To separate a given string into multiple sub strings

DATA str(30) TYPE C VALUE 'Rust Iron Brown'.

DATA: u(10) TYPE C,

              v(10) TYPE C,

               w(10) TYPE C.

SPLIT str AT ',' INTO u v w.

WRITE: / u,

       / v,

       / w.

TRANSLATE

To convert a given string from one form to another form

TRANSLATE str TO LOWER CASE.

TRANSLATE str TO UPPER CASE.

TRANSLATE str USING 'AXBY'.

in the above example, all occurrences of A in str are replaced by X and B in str are replaced by Y.

SEARCH

to search for substring in a main string.

SEARCH str for 'AD'.  // it is not case sensitive.

In the above example if substring ‘AD’ is existed in main string str then SY-SUBRC will become 0 otherwise

SY-SUBRC will become 4.

Moreover

SY-FDPOS maintains the offset value of the substring to search for substring in a main string.

FIND

To search for substring in a main string.

FIND 'AD' IN str.

It is case sensitive.

SY-FDPOS doesn’t work.

OFFSET CONCEPT IN STRINGS

• This concept is used to extract or modify substrings of a given main string
• OFFSET indicates position of a character in a string
• OFFSET of 1st character is 0.
• OFFSET of 2nd character is 1 and so on.

DATA W(20) TYPE C VALUE 'INFINITY'.

WRITE W+2(3). //here the output is 'FIN'.

this is the example of extracting substring from the main string here 2 indicates OFFSET of the substring and 3 indicates number of characters.

remember here ‘+’ is not an addition operator. Observe no spaces in both the sides.

W+3(2) = '99'.

WRITE W.

Here the output is INF99ITY

This is an example for setting substring of main string.

Courtesy: ABAP  technical documentation