Padding blanks to a character field and concatenating

[Former Member]

Though in ABAP world for a long time...I've always struggled with simple string conversions like this one.

I'm writing an ABAP object that retrieves dfies data of a structure and based on the length of each field, I concatenate the overall values appropriately separated by blanks.

Ex:

Struct1 has

fld1 length 10 "ABAP"

fld2 length 7 "field"

fld3 length 5 "conv"

My output should go into newStr type string this way

"ABAP field conv "

Please let me know the easiest and efficient string functions I can use to get this. Somehow shift left by n places, did not work.

thanks.

[andreas_mann3]

Hi,

concatenate fld1 fld2 fld3 into newstr separated by space.

Andreas

[Former Member]

CONCATENATE fld1 fld2 fld3 into string separated by SPACE.

Regards,

Ravi

Please mark the helpful answers

[Former Member]

concatenate fld1 fld2 fld3 into newstr separated by space

Message was edited by: Sekhar

[LucianoBentiveg]

CONCATENATE fld1 fld2 fld3 INTO lc_char SEPARATED BY space.

ls_string = lc_char.

[former_member188685]

REPORT  ZTEST_STRING                            .


data: a(10) type c,
      b(7),
      c(5),
      d(22).
      a = 'ABAP'.
      b = 'field'.
      c = 'conv'.

      concatenate a b c into d separated by space.

      write d.

[Former Member]

All,

Concatenate with 'SEPARATED BY space.' gives only single blank. I need exact number of blanks as defined in the structure for each field.

Thanks.

[Former Member]

By the way, after I posted my message, I see that xml content of the screen dropped all the additional blanks I had....each field should be separated by right number of blanks as defined in the field length.

[andreas_mann3]

ok,

2nd try:

put your fields in an int.table / structure

      DO .
        ASSIGN COMPONENT sy-index OF STRUCTURE wa TO <fs1>.
        IF sy-subrc <> 0.
          EXIT.
        ENDIF.
        len = streln( <fs1> ).
        offs = offs + len + 1.

        move <fs1> to nwestr+offs.

      ENDDO.

[Former Member]

REPORT ychatest.

data : str1(10),
       str2(7),
       str3(5),
       str(22).

str1 = 'ABAP'.
str2 = 'Field'.
str3 = 'Conv'.

str+0(10) = str1.
str+10(7) = str2.
str+17(5) = str3.

write : str.

[Former Member]

I'll try this and will get back to you. Thanks for a quick reply. All my field lengths are variables...let me work on it.

[Former Member]

My code now looks like this

newStr type string.

<b>newStr+dfies-offset(dfies-leng) = fld.</b>

where fld takes values from fld1, fld2, fld3, etc.

I get this message when I active -

At the write position, you cannot use offset and length with fields of type "STRING" or "XSTRING".

seems like I cannot use string type for this? I do need string type since I have large message.

Any ideas?

[andreas_mann3]

hi,

try that 3.:

DATA str(10000).
DATA newstr TYPE string.

DATA: BEGIN OF wa,
fld1(10) VALUE 'ABAP',
fld2(7)  VALUE 'field',
fld3(5)  VALUE 'conv',
END OF wa.

FIELD-SYMBOLS <fs1>.
DATA len TYPE i.
DATA offs TYPE i.

DO .
  ASSIGN COMPONENT sy-index OF STRUCTURE wa TO <fs1>.
  IF sy-subrc <> 0.
    EXIT.
  ENDIF.
  DESCRIBE FIELD <fs1>  LENGTH len.
  MOVE <fs1> TO str+offs(len).
  offs = offs + len + 1.
ENDDO.

newstr = str.

Andreas

Message was edited by: Andreas Mann

[Former Member]

Hi Andreas / Sekhar,

both your solutions work....though Andreas is a little more flexible. However, I'm still not sure if I can do this with character type and than assign it to string type. I'm dealing with huge xml files and I read fields from by tag lookup and than I copy this to a data string of type string. I hate to toggle between string and character types.

How big can character field be?

thanks.

[Former Member]

instead of declaring newStr as type string declare it as char of lenght 1000 , that error will not come

[former_member181962]

For type "C", a maximum length specification of 65535 is allowed.

[Former Member]

don't think 1000 bytes will cut it....how big can character field be. Thanks.

[andreas_mann3]

here the allowed lenght:

Type  allowed length
C     1 - 65535 
N     1 - 65535 
P     1 - 16 
X     1 - 65535

Andreas

[Former Member]

If character field can accomadate a max of 65K than I'll have problems....my string can be as big as 2M.

That brings me back to my original issue.

I have an idea...I can use

<b>replace section offset dfies-offset length dfies-leng of newStr with field</b>

where field take different values in a loop like fld1, fld2, fld3, etc.

To do this, I need to initialize a string of a particular size with blanks.

data: newStr type string.

If I know the strlen of newStr ex: say 70000....how can I initialize it with blanks....any idea.

Thanks.