Re: concatenation with a null column (using ||) nulls the result?

On Monday 10 April 2006 05:55 pm, Alvaro Herrera saith:
> Neil Harkins wrote:
> > Note: The cabinets_description for the "548-4th-Cab1" row is " ",
> > not NULL, hence it being displayed. Is this standard SQL behavior?
>
> Yes; something || NULL yields NULL.  If you want NULL to behave as ""
> for the purpose of the concatenation, try
>
> SELECT cabinets_name || ' - ' || COALESCE(cabinets_description, '') AS
> concat FROM cabinets WHERE cabinets_datacenters = 2;
>
> I'm assuming cabinets_name is NOT NULL, so it doesn't need COALESCE.
>
> --

Good to know. Thanks for the input...