I am declaring a variable with inline declaration 50 * ( 2 / 5 ). The problem is that output result is 0 instead of expected 20.
DATA(exact_result) = 50 * ( 2 / 5 ) .
cl_demo_output=>display( exact_result ).
Can anyone suggest why the result is zero where as 50 * (2/5) = 20.
regards,
Umar Abdullah
The inline declaration assigns a data type depending on the type from the Right-Hand Side (RHS) expression. With an arithmetic expression, the compiler determines a data type based on the overall calculation type.
First, 2 and 5 are considered as type I (4 bytes integer), so the result is also of type I even if the operator is a division (integer division in that precise case).
Then, 50 is also considered as type I, and because it's used with another I-type data object (result of subexpression 2 / 5 which is of type I) the result is also of type I.
So, in your example, EXACT_RESULT is assigned the type I.
At run time, because both LHS and RHS data objects are of type I, then the calculation type is I too. Consequently, 2 / 5 equals 0.4 which is rounded to 0 because it's an integer division and the default ABAP rounding is "half up" (rounding of 0.4 gives 0, but 0.5 gives 1).
The workaround is to define explicitly the data type of EXACT_RESULT as having digits after the decimal point (DECFLOAT16, DECFLOAT34, P type with decimals, F and even C because then the calculation type is P !), because the type of the LHS will have a higher priority than the type of the RHS (I), so the calculation will be deduced from the type of the LHS variable.
DATA(exact_result) = CONV decfloat16( 50 * ( 2 / 5 ) ).
Be careful with this next solution : as I said, C leads to a calculation with type P and many decimals, so we could think this example is a good solution :
DATA(exact_result) = '50' * ( 2 / 5 ). " equals 20
But with inline declarations, a P calculation type leads to a data object of type P but with 0 digits after the decimal point, so the result is truncated with other numbers (8 instead of 50 here) :
DATA(exact_result) = '8' * ( 2 / 5 ). " rounded ! (3 instead of 3.2)