ABAP/4 Internal Tables

Internal Table
Temporary table stored in RAM on application server (not on GUI) Created & filled during execution of program Consists of one or more rows with identical structure. Identical to a field string declaration

Consist of a body & optional header line.

Body holds the rows of data
Defined using the occurs n

Header line holds current row being retrieved or added to the table.
Automatically created using begin of Using like will not create header line. Nested internal table does not have header line

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data: BEGIN OF itab1 OCCURS 10, f1, f2, f3, END OF itab1. data itab2 LIKE ztxlfa1 OCCURS 100. data itab3 LIKE ztxlfa1 OCCURS 100 with header line.
1

BEGIN OF creates header LIKE does not create a header line LIKE add WITH HEADER LINE creates a header line.

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Adding data to an Internal Table
APPEND [wa TO] itab.
Wa must have same structure as row of body (Explicit work area) After APPEND sy-tabix is set to the relative row number of row just appended.

APPEND itab to itab is identical to APPEND itab. (Default header line implicit work area) APPEND INITIAL LINE TO itab
Appends a row containing initial values (blanks & zeros) Same as CLEAR ITAB APPEND ITAB

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Using the OCCURS addition:
OCCURS 10 does not limit the number of rows. The system uses the OCCURS clause as a guideline to determine how much memory to allocate. More is allocated if needed. By default use OCCURS 0 The system then allocates 8 KB of memory at run time.

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Reading Data from an Internal Table:
LOOP AT
Reads multiple rows from an internal table into a work area..
f1 f2

Itab

1
2 3

A
B C

XX
YY YY

LOOP AT itab. write: / sy-tabix, itab-f1, itab-f2. ENDLOOP. WRITE: / 'done. sy-tabix =', sy-tabix, / ' sy-subrc =', sy-subrc. OUTPUTS: 1 A XX 2 B YY 3 C YY Done sy-tabix = 99 sy-subrc = 0

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Restricting rows read from an internal table.
Using FROM, TO and WHERE
WHERE returns a subset but always performs a full table scan!.

LOOP AT itab WHERE f2= YY LOOP AT itab from 2 to 3.

Use EXIT, CONTINUE or CHECK to control LOOP AT.