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ABAP Keyword Documentation →  ABAP - Reference →  Declarations →  Declaration Statements →  Data Types and Data Objects →  Declaring Data Objects →  Literals 

Numeric Literals

Numeric literals consist of continuous sequences of numbers with a maximum of 31 digits (0 to 9), which can be directly preceded by a plus (+) or minus (-) sign.

  • Numeric literals between -2147483648 and 2147483647 are integer literals and have the predefined ABAP type i.
  • Numeric literals outside of this interval are packed numeric literals and have the predefined ABAP type p with a length of 8 bytes if they are not longer than 15 digits, and with a length of 16 bytes if they are between 16 and 31 digits long.

Other versions: 7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54


Notes

  • In numeric literals, neither decimal separators nor scientific notation with mantissa and exponent are possible.

  • Numbers that cannot be represented as numeric literals can only be specified in character literals. If used in operand positions where which a numeric value is expected, they are converted accordingly.

  • Numeric literals that extend across multiple lines are not permitted. Furthermore, the literal operator & cannot be used to create a composite literal from multiple numeric literals.


Example

The first literal has the type i. The following literals have the type p and lengths 8 and 16.

DATA: t TYPE c LENGTH 1, 
      l TYPE i. 

DESCRIBE FIELD 123456 TYPE t. 
cl_demo_output=>write( t ). 
DESCRIBE FIELD 123456790123 TYPE t LENGTH l IN BYTE MODE. 
cl_demo_output=>write( |{ t } { l }| ). 
DESCRIBE FIELD 12345679012345678 TYPE t LENGTH l IN BYTE MODE. 
cl_demo_output=>write( |{ t } { l }| ). 
cl_demo_output=>display( ).