To my surprise, I recently discovered ABAP development objects that end with an underscore. If you had asked me before this discovery whether such development objects existed, I would have guessed “no.” Why? That little underscore at the end is easily overlooked when entering data in the SAP GUI or ADT.
However, I was proven wrong by chance. Such development objects do exist. I first noticed it in the message class with the incredibly descriptive name “A_”. With some research, I then found data elements like DATE_ and KEY_, but no database tables or classic views ending with an underscore. In total, there are only a few development objects ending with an underscore, but they do exist.
The origin of these development objects would be interesting. Was it a deliberate decision or simply a typo that has persisted to the present day and will surely continue to do so? I don’t know. A brief internet search yielded nothing on the subject. There could have been a technically sound explanation for the switch from R/2 to R/3. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort can be found.
Would you create a development object yourself that ends with an underscore? Probably not. It would look like something was missing, which would at least briefly give some developers pause for thought, and that’s precisely what we want to avoid according to CleanABAP.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the post, please share the article with your community. Thanks in advance.
Michael (a mind forever voyaging)