Text elements

You use text elements to store texts that cannot be defined in the program code. You can maintain them outside the program where they are used (in the ABAP/4 Editor, select Goto -> Text elements . They are particularly useful for maintaining texts intended for multi-language applications.

The following text element types exist:

Report or program titles

List headings

Column headings

Selection texts (text belonging to selection criteria and program parameters)

Text symbols (constant text passages)

The structure of text elements is determined by the structure TEXTPOOL which contains the following fields:
ID : A single character for the text element type. Possible values are:

R - Report or program titles
T - List headings
H - Column headings
S - Selection texts
I - Text symbols
KEY : Key field that contains the following values depending on the text element type:

H - Number of a line with column
headings (001 - 004)
S - Max. 8-character name of a selection
criterion or program parameter
I - 3-character number of a text symbol

For report or program titles and list headings, the field is blank.
ENTRY : Text belonging to the text element, max. 255 characters.
LENGTH : Length of text

Examples

The following table shows typical values for text elements.

ID	KEY	ENTRY	LENGTH
H	001	'Name Age'	10
I	100	'Tax'	10
R		'Test program'	12
S	CUST	'Customer'	8
T		'Sales'	10

Notes

LENGTH contains the text length. If the text is to be translated into other languages, it is usual to choose a value for LENGTH that is greater than in the original language. In this way, you create extra space for text that may be longer in translation.
You can address text symbols in two different ways - with TEXT-xxx or with '...'(xxx) . Here, xxx stands for the number and ... for the text of the text symbol. The second form makes programs easier to read. The text enclosed in quotation marks should match the text stored under the text symbol. If it does not, the text stored under the text symbol is used. Exception: If the number xxx contains no text, the text enclosed in quotation marks is used.

Example

If the text symbol with the number 001 contains the text 'Please enter your name' , the command


       WRITE: / TEXT-001,
              / 'Please enter your name'(001),
              / 'What is your name?'(001).

produces the same output (i.e. " Please enter your name ") three
times.





When you are in the ABAP/4 program editor, you can compare the texts
used in the program with the texts stored in text symbols by selecting
Goto -> Text elements -> Compare text symbols .

If the LENGTH value you specify for text symbols is greater than the actual length of the text, the system pads the text up to the length LENGTH with blanks. This means that when you use the notation '...'(xxx) , the text enclosed by quotation marks must be explicitly padded with blanks up to the length LENGTH . Otherwise, the text stored under the text symbol would not match the text specified in quotation marks (see note 2).

Example

If the text symbol with the number 036 contains the text 'Name' , but the length is 10, the command


       WRITE: / SY-VLINE, TEXT-036,        SY-VLINE,
              / SY-VLINE, 'Tax     '(036), SY-VLINE,
              / SY-VLINE, 'Tax'(036),      SY-VLINE.

produces the same output (i.e. " | Tax       | " three times. In
the third line, the text stored under the number  036  is output
with a length of 8 and not just the 3-character long text " Tax ".
If you perform a text element comparison here, (see note 2), the text
symbols in the second and third lines would be shown as different.