SELECT Field1 || Field2 FROM Table

Started by Jean-Michel POUREover 24 years ago4 messages
#1Jean-Michel POURE
jm.poure@freesurf.fr

Hello all,

I have PostgreSQL 7.1.1 installed on a RedHat 7.1 server.

When running the following query "SELECT Field1 || Field2 AS Result FROM Table"
the result is NULL when Field2 is NULL.

Same as if I use a PL/pgSQL function to concatenate Filed 1 || Field2.

Did I miss something?

Regards,
Jean-Michel POURE, pgAdmin development team

#2Alex Pilosov
alex@pilosoft.com
In reply to: Jean-Michel POURE (#1)
Re: SELECT Field1 || Field2 FROM Table

Yes, that's correct behaviour. Any operation on null will yield null.

What you need to do:
select coalesce(field1,'') || coalesce(field2,'') ...

-alex

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Jean-Michel POURE wrote:

Show quoted text

Hello all,

I have PostgreSQL 7.1.1 installed on a RedHat 7.1 server.

When running the following query "SELECT Field1 || Field2 AS Result FROM Table"
the result is NULL when Field2 is NULL.

Same as if I use a PL/pgSQL function to concatenate Filed 1 || Field2.

Did I miss something?

Regards,
Jean-Michel POURE, pgAdmin development team

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

#3Jean-Michel POURE
jm.poure@freesurf.fr
In reply to: Alex Pilosov (#2)
Re: SELECT Field1 || Field2 FROM Table

Hello Robert (Bob?),

Thank you for your answer. I will surely make a wide use the COALESCE
function in my scripts.
I also noticed the same behaviour in PL/pgSQL:

CREATE FUNCTION "xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" (text, text)
RETURNS text
AS 'BEGIN

RETURN $1 || ' ' || $2;
END;
'
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql'

Correct me if I am wrong:

It seems that a NULL value is not passed to the function ...
... or is it that a NULL value is not taken into account by PL/pgSQL.

Thank you all for the COALESCE trick.

Greetings from Jean-Michel POURE, Paris, France
pgAdmin development team

#4Alex Pilosov
alex@pilosoft.com
In reply to: Jean-Michel POURE (#3)
Re: Re: SELECT Field1 || Field2 FROM Table

plpgsql is a bit tricky.

In 7.0, if an argument to a function was null, function did not execute at
all, and the result was assumed null.

In 7.1, you can control this behaviour by declaring function as 'strict'
or 'nostrict'. ex: create function(...) as '...' with (strict) gets old
behaviour, nostrict will do what you want.

On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Jean-Michel POURE wrote:

Show quoted text

Hello Robert (Bob?),

Thank you for your answer. I will surely make a wide use the COALESCE
function in my scripts.
I also noticed the same behaviour in PL/pgSQL:

CREATE FUNCTION "xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" (text, text)
RETURNS text
AS 'BEGIN

RETURN $1 || ' ' || $2;
END;
'
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql'

Correct me if I am wrong:

It seems that a NULL value is not passed to the function ...
... or is it that a NULL value is not taken into account by PL/pgSQL.

Thank you all for the COALESCE trick.

Greetings from Jean-Michel POURE, Paris, France
pgAdmin development team

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