Allowed characters in rolename

[jurjen_heeck]

Hi all,

I am working on some role download tooling in excel/vba (a.o. to split one role from a multirole download and create a new uploadable file from that) and sometimes run in to rolenames with characters in them which I can not use as (part of) a filename.

Does anyone know of a list of forbidden (or allowed) characters for role names so I can crosscheck it with a similar list for forbidden filename characters?

Thanks in advance,

Jurjen

[Former Member]

Jurjen

had similar problems in the past and found that not all errors on names and characters are SAP problems, as some characters (like:) cause problems in MSExcell which makes uploads fail.

IN MSExcell one can overcome this sometimes by typing a ' at the beginning of the line forcing excell to see it as text instead of a command, but when downloading the problem is already in the file, so i have no solution for that. maybe talk to an abap expert?

Edited by: Auke Visser on Jan 16, 2008 2:59 PM

[jurjen_heeck]

Auke,

I've already figured out how to stop excel from meddling with my data but I want to suggest a filename based on the rolename when creating the new file.

As soon as there are for instance colons in the rolename the excel 'save as' dialog tends to give a hiccup. Nothing dramatically, really.

If I can find or create a list of characters allowed in rolenames but not in filenames I can filter or substitute them before proposing the filename.

To force excel to create textfiles without interpreting the contents I use a set of vb-commands that directly write to a text file rather that using 'save as text'.

Google away on:

Set FsObject = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

Set FsFile = FsObject.CreateTextFile(sFileName, True)

FsFile.writeline Cells(2, 1).Value

FsFile.writeline "my string full of strange characters"

FsFile.Close

Cheers

Jurjen

[Former Member]

Jurjen

I see you have gone deep already to try and solve this.

Honestly i did never come across a listing of allowed characters.

I even doubt there is one specific for role names. I can only think of limitations in "normal" name ranges and in ABAP.

So i do think a good ABAP programmer is the best choice to help you in this.

[WolfgangJanzen]

As for all repository objects (tables, reports, ...) the name should only contain ASCII characters. ASCII characters are available in all codepages. Using Non-ASCII characters bears the risk of "invalid character" problems ...

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Actually, the system is even more strict:

"Please use only characters from the 'syntactical character set'" (message 00 185)

This is a subset of ASCII characters.

Edited by: Wolfgang Janzen on Jan 17, 2008 1:22 PM