Re: Concatenating not working properly

Michal Taborsky wrote:
> akcent=# SELECT (surname || ', ' || firstname || ' ' || secondname) as
> fullname, title_pre, surname, firstname, secondname FROM person;
>
> fullname | title_pre | surname | firstname | secondname
> -----------------------+-----------+----------+-----------+------------
> | Ing. | Taborsky | Michal |
> | Ing. | Barta | David |
> Novak, Josef | | Novak | Josef |
> Saroch, Adrian Walter | | Saroch | Adrian | Walter
> (4 rows)
>
> Is that a bug or am I missing something ?
>

Try this:
SELECT
(surname || ', ' || firstname || ' ' || secondname) as fullname,
title_pre, surname, firstname, secondname IS NULL FROM person;

You'll find that when secondname is null, so is fullname. Instead of
your original query, do (untested):

SELECT
(surname || ', ' || firstname || ' ' || COALESCE(secondname, '')) as
fullname, title_pre, surname, firstname, secondname FROM person;

HTH,

Joe