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System Classes for Converting Character Sets and Number Formats

The system classes described below enable the conversion of text data between different code pages and of numeric data between different number representations.

Among other things, these classes are a (possible) replacement for the language elements TRANSLATE ... CODE PAGE ... and TRANSLATE ... NUMBER FORMAT ..., the use of which is forbidden in Unicode programs.

Data that is not available in ABAP format (that is, text data that is not in the system code page format, or numerical data that is not in the byte order used on the current application server) can be saved in binary form in an x field or in an xstring.

This is done using the following classes:

Extracts other formats to ABAP data objects (reads a binary input stream).
Exports ABAP data objects to another format (writes to a binary output stream).
Extracts data from any format and exports data to any other format (reads from a binary input stream and writes to a binary output stream).

Note

The class CL_ABAP_CODEPAGE wraps the methods above to make it easier to handle code pages when processing character and byte strings.