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ABAP Keyword Documentation →  ABAP − Reference →  Processing Internal Data →  Assignments →  Assignment and Conversion Rules →  Conversion Rules for Structures 

Structural Fragment View

The structure fragment view splits a structure into fragments. A fragment is a grouping of structure components of the same or similar data types. In nested structures, the elementary components on the lowest nesting depth are taken into account when forming fragments in nested structures. The following parts of a structure are each grouped to form fragments:

  • Consecutive flat character-like components of the types c, n, d, and t, between which there are no alignment gaps, form character-like fragments.
  • Consecutive flat byte-like components of the type x, between which there are no alignment gaps, form byte-like fragments.
  • Consecutive, similarly typed numeric components of type (b, s), i, int8, decfloat16, decfloat34, or f, between which there are no alignment gaps, each form a common fragment.
  • Consecutive time stamp fields of the type utclong, between which there are no alignment gaps, form a separate fragment.
  • Each individual numeric type p component forms a separate fragment. For this type of fragment it is the length that is important, not the number of decimal places.
  • In deep structures, each deep component (reference) forms a separate fragment.
  • Each component with an enumerated type comprises a separate fragment of this type.
  • Each alignment gap is regarded as a fragment.

Other versions: 7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54


Notes

  • In nested structures, you should note that alignment gaps can arise before and after aligned substructures.

  • When structure components are passed using INCLUDE, an additional alignment gap can appear in front of the passed components.

  • The fragment view of structures with components of type p can match, even when the number of decimal places in the components concerned is different.


Example

DATA: 
  BEGIN OF struc, 
    a TYPE c LENGTH 3, 
    b TYPE n LENGTH 4, 
    c TYPE d, 
    d TYPE t, 
    e TYPE decfloat16, 
    f TYPE x LENGTH 2, 
    g TYPE x LENGTH 4, 
    h TYPE i, 
    i TYPE i, 
    j TYPE i, 
    k TYPE i, 
  END OF struc.

The structure struc contains the following fragments for the character representation UCS-2 used by the ABAP programming language (in which character-like fields are represented by two bytes per character). Alignment gaps are marked with an A.

Fragment Components Bytes
1 a, b, c, d 6+8+16+12
2 A 6
3 e 8
4 f, g 2+4
5 A 2
6 h, i, j, k 4+4+4+4