DESCRIBE

Other versions: 7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54

Syntax Forms

Field Properties

1. DESCRIBE FIELD ...

Properties of an Internal Table

2. DESCRIBE TABLE ...

Distance Between Two Fields

3. DESCRIBE DISTANCE ...

You can use the variants of the statement DESCRIBE listed above to specify some of the properties that have data objects at runtime.

Notes

The statement DESCRIBE is basically used to specify the properties of data objects of elementary data types. If DESCRIBE is used for structures or data objects of deeper data types like strings, internal tables, or reference variables, only elementary properties can be specified. Additional information, for example, the static or dynamic type of a reference variable cannot be determined by DESCRIBE. For this information, you must use the type classes of the Run Time Type Services (RTTS), which allow the specification all properties of data objects of all data types. Since the functions of the RTTS type classes comprise the complete functions of the DESCRIBE statement, the system classes can be used instead of the statement.
The variant DESCRIBE LIST specifies the properties of lists in the list buffer.