Simple Formatting & Output

This post covers the topic of simple output (write a line of text to the screen) with some formatting.

• Write: 
• The WRITE statement outputs the contents of a text, a field or constant in a format appropriate to the data type.  ABAP data types will be discussed in detail during the next topic, ABAP Data.
• Successive WRITE statements output data,  separated by one space,  on the same output line. When an output line is full,  output continues on the next line.
• The SKIP statement generates blank lines.

• Text Symbols
• Texts are centrally managed by using the TEXT ELEMENTS function either from the editor’s initial screen, from within the editor Edit -> Text elements, or from the program code (Goto -> Text elements), or by double-clicking on the ‘text’(003) word.
• Text symbol can be addressed by text-### or 'textliteral'(###). If the text symbol ### exists in the text pool for the logon language, this is the same as using text-###. Otherwise, the literal 'textliteral' is used as the content of the text symbol. 
• The primary advantage of Text symbols is that they can be managed separately for different languages (Goto -> Translation).

• Offsets and Length
• +off(len)
• off: the start column position for the output value.
• len: the output length for the output value
• Most of the time in ABAP, we may have to read the part of data of a field (say X) and populate to other field (Say Y). In this case we have to use the offset concept to read the value.

• Example:
  SY-DATUM is the standard SAP field, which holds the current system date. The format of the date in SY-DATUM field will be YYYYMMDD.
  
  
  Where,
  • YYYY => Year
  • MM => Month
  • DD => Day
  In most of the cases we may have to read the value of month form the SY-SATUM and pass to some variable. Similarly we may have to read the value of year & day.

*--Use offset concept & populate the Year, Month & Day value to Local valriable
*--Year: Starting form Zeroth Position next 4 characters
l_year = sy-datum+0(4).
*--Month: Starting form fourth Position next 2 characters
l_month = sy-datum+4(2).
*--Day: Starting form sixth Position next 2 characters
l_day = sy-datum+6(2).

•  Titles and Colums
• Title and column headings can be maintained either with the Text elements function from the initial editor screen, from within the editor (Edit -> Text elements, Titles and Headers), or from the program code (Goto -> Text elements, Titles and Headers).
• An alternative possibility is to maintain column headings when the list is printed - System --> List --> List Header or shortcut ‘%CH’.
• The list header appears as the first header line in the list.  If no list header is maintained,  the report title (program name from attributes screen) is used instead.
• Positioning of the text is judged by the ruler marks above each line.
• Texts can be maintained in the various system languages (Goto -> Translation menu option from within the Titles and Headers maintenance screen).
• Don’t forget to save !