Predefined ABAP Types

The table below shows the predefined ABAP types. Additional attributes can be found under value ranges and initial values.

Type	Length	Standard length	Description
b	1 Byte		1 byte integer (internal)
c	1 to 65,535 characters	1 character	Text field
cursor	as i	as i	Database cursor
d	8 characters		Date field
f	8 bytes		Floating point number
i	4 bytes		4 byte integer
n	1 to 65,535 characters	1 character	Numeric text
p	1 to 16 bytes	8 bytes	Packed number
string	variable		Text string
s	2 bytes		2 byte integer (internal)
t	6 characters		Time field
x	1 to 65,535 bytes	1 byte	Byte field
xstring	variable		Byte string

These types are predefined in every ABAP program.

All predefined ABAP types in this table are elementary.

Apart from the types b and s, the predefined ABAP types can also be used to define your own data types and data objects and for typing. The types b and s cannot be specified directly in ABAP statements. Self-defined data types and data objects in ABAP programs are of the data type b and s if they are defined with reference to data elements to the ABAP Dictionary which are of the external data types INT1 or INT2.

The predefined data types string and xstring describe data objects of variable length (dynamic data objects). While the length of data objects in all other elementary data types is determined for its whole lifetime, the length of text and byte strings varies according to their content (the maximum size of a string is determined by profile parameter ztta/max_memreq_MB, see Maximum size of dynamic data objects).

The program-globally predefined data type cursor is currently synonymous with the predefined ABAP type i. This is required for the declaration of a cursor variable for database cursor handling.

All predefined ABAP types for which a length interval is specified in second column in the table are generic, which means that the length is not part of the type description. For the type p, the fractional portion is indefinite as well as the length.

The entries in the standard length column specify the length that is used for the corresponding generic data type when declaring data objects, if no explicit length is specified in the relevant statement.

In Unicode systems, the length must either be specified in characters and bytes. In non-Unicode systems, the length of a character is one byte, but in Unicode systems the length of a character depends on which Unicode character representation is used.