So you’re an experienced ABAP programmer wanting to leverage off the fantastic new functionality available to you in ABAP 7.40!

However, searching for information on this topic leads you to fragmented pages or blogs that refer to only a couple of the new features available to you.

What you need is a quick reference guide which gives you the essentials you need and shows you how the code you are familiar with can be improved with ABAP 7.40.

The below document contains exactly this!

It gives examples of “classic” ABAP and its 740 equivalent. It goes into more details on the more difficult topics normally via examples. This allows the reader to dive in to the level they desire. While this document does not contain everything pertaining to ABAP 740 it certainly covers the most useful parts in the experience of the author.

The document has been compiled by drawing on existing material available online as well as trial and error by the author. In particular the blogs by Horst Keller have been useful and are the best reference I have found (prior to this document ). He has a landing page of sorts for his various blogs on the topic here:

ABAP Language News for Release 7.40

Credit also goes to Naimesh Patel for his useful explanations and examples on ABAP 7.40. Here is his example of the “FOR iteration expression” which I leaned on (links to his other 740 articles can be found at the bottom of the link):

https://zevolving.com/2015/05/abap-740-for-iteration-expression/

I compiled the below document to make the transition to using ABAP 740 easier for myself and my project team. It has worked well for us and I hope it will do the same for you.

Regards,

Jeff Towell

ABAP 7.40 Quick Reference  

 

Contents

1. Inline Declarations

2. Table Expressions

3. Conversion Operator CONV

     I.  Definition

     II. Example

4. Value Operator VALUE

     I.   Definition

     II.  Example for structures

     III. Examples for internal tables

5. FOR operator

     I.   Definition

     II.  Explanation

     III. Example 1

     IV. Example 2

     V. FOR with THEN and UNTIL|WHILE

6. Reduction operator REDUCE

     I.   Definition

     II.  Note

     III. Example 1

     IV. Example 2

     V.  Example 3

7. Conditional operators COND and SWITCH

     I.   Definition

     II.  Example for COND

     III. Example for SWITCH

8. CORRESPONDING operator

     I.   Definition

     II.  Example Code

     III. Output

     IV. Explanation

     V.  Additions MAPPING and EXCEPT

9.Strings

     I.   String Templates

     II.  Concatenation

     III. Width/Alignment/Padding.

     IV. Case

     V.  ALPHA conversion

     VI.  Date conversion

10. Loop at Group By

     I.   Definition

     II.  Explanation

     III. Example

     IV. Output

11. Classes/Methods

     I.   Referencing fields within returned structures

     II.  Methods that return a type BOOLEAN

     III. NEW operator

12. Meshes

     I.   Problem

     II.  Solution

     III. Output

13. Filter

     I.   Definition

     II.  Problem

     III. Solution

1. Inline Declarations

 

2. Table Expressions

If a table line is not found, the exception CX_SY_ITAB_LINE_NOT_FOUND is raised. No sy-subrc.

NB: There will be a short dump if you use an inline expression that references a non-existent record.

        SAP says you should therefore assign a field symbol and check sy-subrc.

ASSIGN lt_tab[ 1 ] to FIELD–SYMBOL().
IF sy–subrc = 0.
…
ENDIF.

NB: Use itab [ table_line = … ] for untyped tables.

3. Conversion Operator CONV

I.  Definition

CONV dtype|#( … )

dtype = Type you want to convert to (explicit)

#     = compiler must use the context to decide the type to convert to (implicit)

II. Example

Method cl_abap_codepage=>convert_to expects a string

 

4. Value Operator VALUE

I. Definition

     Variables:    VALUE dtype|#( )

     Structures:  VALUE dtype|#( comp1 = a1 comp2 = a2 … )

     Tables:         VALUE dtype|#( ( … ) ( … ) … ) …

II. Example for structures

     TYPES:  BEGIN OF ty_columns1, “Simple structure
                     cols1 TYPE i,
                     cols2 TYPE i,
                   END OF ty_columns1.

      TYPES: BEGIN OF ty_columnns2,  “Nested structure
                     coln1 TYPE i,
                     coln2 TYPE ty_columns1,
                  END OF ty_columns2.

      DATA: struc_simple TYPE ty_columns1,
                struc_nest    TYPE ty_columns2.

     struct_nest   = VALUE t_struct(coln1 = 1
                                                  coln2-cols1 = 1
                                                  coln2-cols2 = 2 ).

     OR

     struct_nest   = VALUE t_struct(coln1 = 1
                                                   coln2 = VALUE #( cols1 = 1
                                                   cols2 = 2 ) ).

III. Examples for internal tables

Elementary line type:

TYPES t_itab TYPE TABLE OF i WITH EMPTY KEY.

DATA itab TYPE t_itab.

itab = VALUE #( ( ) ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ).

Structured line type (RANGES table):

DATA itab TYPE RANGE OF i.

itab = VALUE #( sign = ‘I’  option = ‘BT’ ( low = 1  high = 10 )
( low = 21 high = 30 )
( low = 41 high = 50 )
option = ‘GE’ ( low = 61 )  ).

5. FOR operator

I. Definition

     FOR wa| IN itab [INDEX INTO idx] [cond]

II. Explanation

This effectively causes a loop at itab. For each loop the row read is assigned to a work area (wa) or field-symbol().

This wa or is local to the expression i.e. if declared in a subrourine the variable wa or is a local variable of

that subroutine. Inde