The other day a very strange thing happened to me. I was sending SY-TABIX as a parameter into a method. Before the call it contained 1 but, once inside, the parameter’s value was 0. Weird. o_thingalizer->very_strange_thing(sy-tabix). I was hearing “Why?! Why?!” repeatedly inside my head. But suddenly I understood it! When you send some field of the SYST as a by parameter you have to pass it by value and not by reference.

Some time ago I wrote an article explaining a way to automatically convert classic exceptions to exception classes. Today I use this technique in almost all the exception classes that I create (and I’ve even improved it, but I’ll leave that for another post).

This tip explains the exact opposite.

Sometimes, when comparing versions, several differences show up even when we did not make changes to the code. These differences may simply be a consequence of a Pretty Printer that altered code indentations. This makes comparing the versions confusing. But ABAP Workbench lets you configure the diff tool to ignore indentations and even comments. Just press F5 while there or go to the “Display Format> Settings” menu and adapt it to your needs:

When you want to use CL_GUI_ALV_GRID in a CONTAINER you must copy a standard Status GUI from another program. For example, the GUI Status “STANDARD” of the function group SALV. And then, in the screen’s PAI you do:

SET PF-STATUS ‘STANDARD’.

And thus the little standard buttons show up on your screen.

While coding, it’s always good to have ways to speed up what we’re doing. A good one is automatic generation of templates for function and method calls.

I know 3 ways to achieve this.

Today when I want to create a SALV I always create a DDIC structure with the data elements already set to show the texts I need. This avoids the need for code to manipulate the field catalog.

The ABAP editor is full of functionalities yet to be discovered.

When I do CTRL-F to search for text, the option I usually choose is “Find next”.

During all my ABAPian life I was convinced that APPEND STRUCTURES had one single purpose: to add new extra fields to an existing standard table.

But I recently learned that they let you do two more things after all:

You remember having written a method some years ago which you need now. You know it had the word MALMEQUER somewhere in its name. But what now? How will you find it? You could use transaction SE24 to look at every class you worked on since then. But that would probably keep you busy for ages. Don’t do that. Try using transaction SE84 instead:

Let’s say you want to call a method for which you don’t know the parameters. What do you do?

You used to have to use the “pattern” button. Or open the class in a new window to look at the method’s parameters. But then the ABAP Editor evolved and we got auto-complete which made everything much more easy.

But there is yet another way.

When I want to search for a word in an ABAP program I usually press CTRL-F to use the normal search feature of the ABAP editor. I enter the word I want to find and then press “NEXT” to look for it.

But there is another way. And it’s not better nor worse. Just different: the incremental search.

When a method returns a value as a RETURNING parameter this is always done by value and not by reference. Several of my methods return internal tables, some of them quite large. It always worried me the idea that, since it’s being passed by value, ABAP would be returning a copy of the internal table, impacting both performance and the program’s used memory.

Fortunately, I recently learned that this is not​ a problem.

When you try to insert a record with a key which already exists in the table the program dumps. This, in some cases, is not desirable because, even if you don’t care, it forces you to check if the keys already exist before trying to insert then. But ABAP has a solution for these situations: INSERT dbtab FROM TABLE itab [ACCEPTING DUPLICATE KEYS]. Don’t worry because this will not violate the first law of thermodynamics: the duplicate records are not inserted.

Sometimes a thing is right under your nose and your still don’t see it.

At my current client I daily work with a lot of different systems. When I make a change in a setting of one system, either because I’m lazy or because I forget, I end up not applying it to all the others.

But there is a simple way to copy all the ABAP Workbench settings at once from one system to the other.

By default, the ABAP version comparison tool is horrible. It displays both versions in a single column and, even though the differences are highlighted, it’s awfully confusing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Press the “settings” button at the top and you’ll find that there are 3 different display modes (besides some other nice options): one-column, two-columns and, surprise, the Split Screen Editor. This is probably the option you’ll want to choose since it’s the most powerful.