Concatenation

Concatenates the left and right string or blob operands.

Category: binary

SQL symbol: ||

Syntax

<left> || <right>

Parameters

• <left> — The value to concatenate to. Accepts nvarchar, varbinary, varchar.
• <right> — The value to append. It must be the SAME string type as the left - VARCHAR with VARCHAR, VARBINARY with VARBINARY - and a number must be cast first. Accepts nvarchar, varbinary, varchar.

Returns

nvarchar, varbinary, varchar

Examples

SELECT name || ' (planet)' FROM $planets LIMIT 3;

Mercury (planet)
Venus (planet)
Earth (planet)

SELECT 'a' || NULL;

NULL

Signatures

• nvarchar || nvarchar → nvarchar
• varbinary || varbinary → varbinary
• varchar || varchar → varchar

Notes

The operands must be the same string type; mixing VARCHAR and VARBINARY is rejected rather than silently coerced. x || NULL is NULL for every row - it is not treated as an empty string - but the expression still carries the string operand's type.

See Also

• Addition +