Re: Text concat Problem

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Luis [UNKNOWN] Magaa wrote:

> insert into employee(title,first_name,start_date,charge) values('Mr. X','Smith',date(now()),'None');
> insert into employee(title,first_name,start_date,charge) values('Mr. Y','Smith',date(now()),'None');
> insert into employee(title,first_name,start_date,charge) values('Mr. Z','Smith',date(now()),'None');
>
> so far there is no problem at all, the problem comes here:
>
> select title || ' ' || first_name || ' ' || last_name as fullname from employee;
>
> fullname
> ----------------
>
>
>
> (3 rows)
>
> Doesn't work !!!!, I'm thinking it is because of the null value in last_name. Have any idea or suggestion on how to workaround this situation.

Yes, use coalesce(<fieldname>, '') instead of fieldname.
So,
select coalesce(title, '') || ' ' || coalesce(first_name, '')
|| ' ' || coalesce(last_name, '') as fullname from employee;

SQL defines concatenation of a string value and NULL to be NULL.