Interesting itab(*) syntax in a custom program

Hi fellow ABAP developers!

I have just spotted a bit of ABAP in a bespoke report program that has me flumoxed.

This is it (with some anonymization);

*----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TYPES: tt_chg_ptrs_in TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF bdcp,

tt_ztable TYPE SORTED TABLE OF ztable WITH UNIQUE KEY matnr.

DATA: l_it_chg_ptrs_in TYPE tt_chg_ptrs_in,

l_it_ztable TYPE tt_ztable.

IF l_it_chg_ptrs_in(*) IS NOT INITIAL

OR l_it_ztable[] IS NOT INITIAL.

.

.

ENDIF.

*----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The (*) appendage appears to behave in the same way as the [] variant when refering to the complete set of itab entries. I checked this out in debug just to be certain that the l_it_chg_ptrs_in(*) reference returned the same data as l_it_chg_ptrs_in[].

Is this a new (or old) lanuage element?

Who can shed some light on this for me?

Cheers all,

Mike