Internal Tables in ABAP
Internal tables are an extremely important feature of the ABAP language. An internal table is defined as a vector of structs in C++ or a vector of objects in Java. The main difference with these languages is that ABAP provides a collection of statements to easily access and manipulate the contents of internal tables. Note that ABAP does not support arrays; the only way to define a multi-element data object is to use an internal table.
Internal tables are a way to store variable datasets of a fixed structure in the working memory of ABAP, and provides the functionality of dynamic arrays. The data is stored on a row-by-row basis, where each row has the same structure.
Internal tables are preferably used to store and format the content of database tables from within a program. Furthermore, internal tables in connection with structures are the most important means of defining very complex data structures in an ABAP program.
Following example define an internal table with two fields with the format of database table VBRK:
DATA : BEGIN OF I_VBRK OCCURS 0, VBELN LIKE VBRK-VBELN, ZUONR LIKE VBRK-ZUONR, END OF I_VBRK.Read more about this topic: ABAP
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