CONCAT

Concatenate strings. This function joins two or more string arguments into a single string. Returns NULL if any argument is NULL.

Syntax

CONCAT(str1,str2,...)

Description

Returns the string that results from concatenating the arguments. May have one or more arguments. If all arguments are non-binary strings, the result is a non-binary string. If the arguments include any binary strings, the result is a binary string. A numeric argument is converted to its equivalent binary string form; if you want to avoid that, you can use an explicit type cast, as in this example:

SELECT CONCAT(CAST(int_col AS CHAR), char_col);

CONCAT() returns NULL if any argument is NULL.

A NULL parameter hides all information contained in other parameters from the result. Sometimes this is not desirable; to avoid this, you can:

• Use the CONCAT_WS() function with an empty separator, because that function is NULL-safe.

• Use IFNULL() to turn NULLs into empty strings.

Oracle Mode

In Oracle mode, CONCAT ignores null.

Examples

SELECT CONCAT('Ma', 'ria', 'DB');
+---------------------------+
| CONCAT('Ma', 'ria', 'DB') |
+---------------------------+
| MariaDB                   |
+---------------------------+

SELECT CONCAT('Ma', 'ria', NULL, 'DB');
+---------------------------------+
| CONCAT('Ma', 'ria', NULL, 'DB') |
+---------------------------------+
| NULL                            |
+---------------------------------+

SELECT CONCAT(42.0);
+--------------+
| CONCAT(42.0) |
+--------------+
| 42.0         |
+--------------+

Using IFNULL() to handle NULL values:

SELECT CONCAT('The value of @v is: ', IFNULL(@v, ''));
+------------------------------------------------+
| CONCAT('The value of @v is: ', IFNULL(@v, '')) |
+------------------------------------------------+
| The value of @v is:                            |
+------------------------------------------------+

In Oracle mode:

SELECT CONCAT('Ma', 'ria', NULL, 'DB');
+---------------------------------+
| CONCAT('Ma', 'ria', NULL, 'DB') |
+---------------------------------+
| MariaDB                         |
+---------------------------------+

See Also

• GROUP_CONCAT()

• Oracle mode

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