Before the modernization of ABAP in 7.40, a table lookup required an auxiliary variable and at least 4 lines of code.

Take this pre-populated internal table:

DATA(itbl) = VALUE t_t001( ( bukrs = 'COCA' butxt = 'Coca-cola' )
                           ( bukrs = 'PEPS' butxt = 'Pepsi' ) ).

This is what you had to do before 7.40:

DATA wa LIKE LINE OF itbl.
DATA butxt TYPE butxt.
READ TABLE itbl INTO wa WITH KEY bukrs = 'SPRI'.
IF SY-SUBRC = 0.
  butxt = wa-butxt.
ENDIF.

7.40 made it more elegante. No more auxiliary variable and one line of code. Except that we have to deal with the CX_SY_ITAB_LINE_NOT_FOUND exception even in the cases (like this one) in which we don’t care about it:

TRY.
    DATA(butxt) = itbl[ bukrs = 'SPRI' ]-butxt.
  CATCH CX_SY_ITAB_LINE_NOT_FOUND.
    CLEAR butxt.
ENDTRY.

But now I found that we can use VALUE together with OPTIONAL to help us make it truly simple:

DATA(butxt) = VALUE #( itbl[ bukrs = 'SPRI' ]-butxt OPTIONAL ).

It’s easier to read and much easier to understand. This is beautiful code.

Greetings from Abapinho.