May 18, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item A CONCAT Function For The Rest Of Us
May 21, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Why would I use this function rather than simply joining the strings with "+" as it does inside the function. Especially when there are more that two strings being joined, where it looks like it would be more expensive to call a function multiple times.
May 21, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Hi Steve
Nobody is making you use the function. But to give one quick example where it could be useful. Say you have two string variables, and one of them is NULL. If you simply use + to add these together, you'll receive NULL - i.e. the valid string value will be lost. Using this CONCAT function, the string will be returned.
Example:
DECLARE @S1 VARCHAR(10)
DECLARE @S2 VARCHAR(10) = 'Hello'
SELECT dbo.CONCAT(@S1, @S2, 1) -- Returns 'Hello'
Regards,
Mike.
May 21, 2012 at 3:56 pm
I didn't mean to imply that I was being forced. I was just trying to see if I was missing an aspect that would make it more useful in some places. But what it seems like is that there is no benefit over the tried and true method that most of us have been using for years with either coalesce or isnull.
selectCOALESCE(@String1,'') + ISNULL(@String2,'')
May 21, 2012 at 4:09 pm
OK, I have found a benefit of the CONCAT function in SQL 2012. it is automatically converting data types to strings and outputting them rather than giving you data type mismatches, and forcing you to convert all the inputs. I can also see how people will consider this lazy and at least in the case of DateTime fields, you would generally convert to a specific format.
but instead of coding :
SELECT 'Current Time ' + CAST(GETDATE() AS VARCHAR(20))
you could use
SELECT CONCAT('Current Time ', GETDATE())
June 6, 2012 at 7:19 am
The SQL Server 2012 CONCAT function accepts two or more string values. The user-defined CONCAT function accepts only two values. It's the "two or more" part that would be valuable.
May 10, 2016 at 9:27 am
Thanks for the script.
May 10, 2016 at 10:41 am
Glad it was useful!
Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply