Common Methods to Remove Leading Zeros in ABAP

WRITE statement with NO-ZERO

When outputting with WRITE, you can suppress leading zeros like this:

code:

DATA: lv_num TYPE n LENGTH 10 VALUE ‘0000123456’.

WRITE lv_num NO-ZERO. ” Output: 123456

SHIFT statement

You can shift the contents to the left to remove zeros:

code:

DATA: lv_num TYPE n LENGTH 10 VALUE ‘0000123456’.

SHIFT lv_num LEFT DELETING LEADING ‘0’.
WRITE lv_num. ” Output: 123456

CONDENSE with NO-GAPS

Works if the field is CHAR/NUMC:

DATA: lv_char TYPE char10 VALUE ‘0000123456’.

CONDENSE lv_char NO-GAPS. ” removes spaces
SHIFT lv_char LEFT DELETING LEADING ‘0’.
WRITE lv_char. ” Output: 123456

Conversion Exit (for SAP standard fields)

Some SAP fields (like Material Number MATNR) have conversion exits to display without leading zeros.

DATA: lv_matnr TYPE matnr VALUE ‘000000000000123456’.

CALL FUNCTION ‘CONVERSION_EXIT_ALPHA_OUTPUT’
EXPORTING
input = lv_matnr
IMPORTING
output = lv_matnr.

WRITE lv_matnr. ” Output: 123456

Best practice:

• Use CONVERSION_EXIT_ALPHA_OUTPUT if dealing with SAP database fields like MATNR, KUNNR, LIFNR.

• Use SHIFT ... DELETING LEADING '0' or WRITE ... NO-ZERO for simple variables.