The New ABAP Editor

The New ABAP Editor (Part 1)

By
Suresh Kumar Parvathaneni

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The New ABAP Editor

Table of Contents
1 OVERVIEW.............................................................................................................. 3
1.1 PRE-REQUISITES ................................................................................................... 3
2 SHIFTING TO NEW ABAP EDITOR ................................................................... 4
3 FEATURES IN NEW ABAP EDITOR .................................................................. 5
3.1 FIRST LOOK ......................................................................................................... 5
3.2 DISPLAY FEATURES ............................................................................................. 5
3.2.1 Line Numbers:....................................................................................... 5
3.2.2 Changed Line Indicators:.................................................................... 5
3.2.3 Bookmarks: ........................................................................................... 6
3.2.5 Changing the Font and Colors of coding environment................... 6
3.2.6 Window Splitter..................................................................................... 7

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 The New ABAP Editor

1 Overview
This article, the first part of a two-article series, takes you on a brief tour of the
features available in the new ABAP editor (step by step with screenshots)

1.1 Pre-requisites
The new ABAP editor is available with SAP GUI for windows 6.40 patch level 10
or higher. However this new editor is supported from the SAP Version SAP
Netweaver 2004s.

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 The New ABAP Editor

2 Shifting to New ABAP Editor

Start any of the following transaction codes to access the ABAP workbench:
• SE38
• SE37
• SE24
• SE37
We would use SE38 for our demo purposes.
Procedure to shift between Old ABAP Editor and New ABAP Editor:
• Go to Utilities
Settings
• Click on Front-end Editor (New) as shown below

• Click for changes to effect.

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 The New ABAP Editor

3 Features in New ABAP Editor

3.1 First Look
View of the new ABAP Editor (from SE38):

3.2 Display Features

Following are some of the features that could be observed while writing the code:

3.2.1 Line Numbers:

As observed in the above screenshot, the new ABAP editor displays the line
numbers for easy navigation through the code.

3.2.2 Changed Line Indicators:The changed lines in the current session are
marked with .

These indicators would vanish once you come out of the program.

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The New ABAP Editor
3.2.3 Bookmarks:

Bookmarks allow in navigating and code editing. There are 9 numbered

bookmarks provided by SAP and unlimited unnumbered bookmarks. Bookmarks
could be accessed by the right click of the mouse in the Indicator Margin (The
complete left portion of the ABAP editor).

To set a bookmark, right click on the Indicative Margin, click on Bookmarks
Bookmark
0 (Bookmarks are numbered 0 to 9). A Blue flag with the bookmark number would
appear on the Indicative Margin.
To navigate to any bookmark marked earlier, right click on the Indicative Margin, Go to
Bookmark
Bookmark 0.

3.2.4 Code Hints

Code hints appear as you type in ABAP editor. For example, if you start typing for
Parameters, following occurs:
• When typed P, nothing appears.
• When typed PA, code hint PACK appears.
• When typed PAR, code hint PARAMETERS appears.

Press ENTER to choose the given code hint.

3.2.5 Changing the Font and Colors of coding environment

Click on , available at the right side bottom of the editor. Click on “Fonts and
Colors” on the left side of the window that is appeared after clicking. From here,
we can set different colors and fonts for different elements on the editor.

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The New ABAP Editor
3.2.6 Window Splitter
The window splitter allows you to work on different parts of the code
simultaneously.
The window could be set to splitter mode by double clicking the splitter line
above the vertical scrollbar (shown below).

The split screen is seen as below:

The second article would detail about some more features in New ABAP editor
like Blocks, Code Templates, Breakpoints and others.

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