Sublime Forum

Encoding Issues When Editing ABAP Files in Sublime Text

#1

Hi everyone,

I’ve recently been using Sublime Text to edit SAP ABAP source files and configuration scripts before uploading them into our S/4HANA system. It’s been great for quick edits and code reviews, but I’ve noticed some odd behavior with file encoding and syntax highlighting.

Whenever I open ABAP files that contain extended characters (like German umlauts or Unicode literals), Sublime sometimes misreads the encoding even when I’ve set UTF-8 as default. This leads to syntax corruption that causes the transport import to fail later in SAP. I’ve also noticed that highlighting doesn’t always recognize certain ABAP keywords, especially when working inside include structures or class definitions.

I’ve tried adjusting fallback_encoding and even tested the ABAP language packages available through Package Control, but the issue persists. I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced similar problems when working with SAP-related files in Sublime Text, or if there’s a recommended configuration, plugin, or workaround to keep syntax and encoding consistent during SAP development.

I started exploring these issues while reviewing some SAP-related study materials from Pass4Future during my certification prep, and it made me wonder how developers outside of SAP GUI handle similar formatting and compatibility challenges in modern editors like Sublime.

Thanks in advance

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#2

file encoding

Sublime Text primarily uses utf-8 encoding to load and save files (see default_encoding setting). The fallback_encoding is used to load/save ANSI encoded files, if their encoding wasn’t detected automatically. It may guess wrong, if special characters like german umlauts don’t appear within the first chunk of code, which is used to detect encoding.

If you see wrong characters instead of umlauts or even just ?, it is very likely the source file is ANSI encoded. ST’s default fallback_encoding however is german “Windows 1252” ANSI codec. Maybe SAP encodes source files in an even more legacy ANSI encoding?

To find that out, you can use File > Reopen with Encoding menu item on affected file and try some of supported codecs. This would be the one to set fallback_encoding to.

syntax highlighting

Packages like ABAP (from Package Control) provide syntax definitions, which provide rules how to highlight keywords, variables, etc… The quality of syntax highlighting depends on them.

ABAP hasn’t changed for 7years at the time of writing and provides an old TextMate syntax definition. They are known to be of limited capabilities and thus may not produce best highlighting results.

On the other hand SQL like languages are notoriously complex as they tend to specify unique syntax rules for each expression or statement. Supporting all of those billions of statemens is barely possible.

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#3

Thanks for the detailed explanation, that really helps clarify things. It does seem like the encoding mismatch could be the root of what I’m seeing. I’ll check if our SAP system is using a different legacy encoding, especially since some of our older transports come from systems predating Unicode migration. Trying the “Reopen with Encoding” option sounds like a good way to verify that.

The point about the ABAP syntax package also makes sense. I had a feeling it hadn’t been updated in a while since certain new keywords and annotations aren’t highlighted properly. I might explore modifying the syntax definition or using a custom TextMate grammar just to make ABAP editing a bit smoother in Sublime.

Appreciate your insights, this gives me a clearer path forward. Out of curiosity, have you ever customized or extended Sublime syntax definitions for niche languages like ABAP? I’m wondering if that’s worth the effort in this case.

Thanks

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