Re: Concatenation Operator: Is this a bug?

Matt Friedman writes:

> The following query behaves as I would expect if all the columns mentioned
> have a value in them. If any of the columns are null however, the whole row
> returns but it's blank.

Correct.

> SELECT
> title || ' ' || author || ' ' || description || ' ' || excerpt_title || '
> ' || excerpt_intro || ' ' || excerpt AS text
> FROM
> books;
>
> Is this an issue with null being considered a "non" value?

Sort of. More precisely, it's an issue with following the SQL standard.

> Would a cast on the columns help?

No.

> Perhaps there is an ifnull return someting function?

COALESCE(colname, 'value-if-null')

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net http://yi.org/peter-e/