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Author's profile photo Horst Keller

ABAP News for Release 7.50 – Fundamentals

This one will be short but fundamental.

Only Unicode Systems in Release 7.50

 

ABAP 7.50 is Unicode only! An AS ABAP can only run as Unicode System with system code page UTF-16. All ABAP programs must be Unicode programs where the Unicode syntax checks are effective.You must always set the respective program attribute.

 

 

 

Nothing more to say from my side.

 

New Built-in Data Type INT8

 

The existing built-in types b, s, i in the ABAP language and the respective built-in types INT1, INT2, INT4 in the ABAP Dictionary got a big brother (or is it a sister?):

 

  • int8 in ABAP language and INT8 in the ABAP Dictionary.

 

  • They specify 8-byte integers with a value range of  -9223372036854775808 to +9223372036854775807.

 

Not much to say about that either. Simply go and use it if you need big integers. The rules are mainly the same as for 4-byte integers, of course with enhanced values for alignment requirement (adress must be divisible by 8), predefined output length on screens (20) and a new calculation type  int8 for arithmetic expressions.

 

Just a little example to remind you that it is always good to use an integer calculation type if you calculate integers, especially for big integers:

DATA arg TYPE int8 VALUE 2.

cl_demo_output=>new(
)->write( |**  : { arg ** 62 }|
)->write( |ipow: { ipow( base = arg exp = 62 ) }|
)->display( ).

 

While ** calculates with floating point type f and produces a wrong result, ipow calculates with int8 and produces the correct result.

 

PS: Cool way of “writing” isn’t it? But only for demo purposes …

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      Author's profile photo Jose Antonio Ruz Polanco
      Jose Antonio Ruz Polanco

      Very explicit topic, I´m really glad I found it. It is not an usual thing that I can have fun reading about ABAP, most of the time I get pretty serious. Thanks for your insight!!!!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Good topic!!

      I'm unsure if Int8 data type will be available without a SAP HANA database? kindly advise on this.

      Thank you.

      Author's profile photo Horst Keller
      Horst Keller
      Blog Post Author

      Sure it is.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you.

      Author's profile photo Rohit Gupta
      Rohit Gupta

      Are constructor operators are better in performance ? or It is just a different way of writing the code.