What does SQL Select symbol || mean?

Question

What does || do in SQL?

SELECT 'a' || ',' || 'b' AS letter

Grosberg

See also: #1373738 – Antimatter

Did you try executing it? – Envoi

It doesn't add anything in your example, but is helpful in other contexts, e.g. in ... WHERE Name LIKE '%' || :searched || '%'... – Trihydric

Answer 1

|| represents string concatenation. Unfortunately, string concatenation is not completely portable across all sql dialects:

• ansi sql: || (infix operator)
• mysql: concat ( vararg function ). caution: || means 'logical or' (It's configurable, however; thanks to @hvd for pointing that out)
• oracle: || (infix operator), concat ( caution: function of arity 2 only ! )
• postgres: || (infix operator)
• sql server: + (infix operator), concat ( vararg function )
• sqlite: || (infix operator)

hopefully the confusion is complete ...

Shadrach

It's configurable in MySQL. – Godfry

so MySQL is the only RDBMS where '||' is equivalent to logical OR? – Scleroderma

Also MariaDB treats || as logical OR by default, because MariaDB is a fork of MySQL. They have both changed enough since the fork that they should be considered different products, but they still share this behavior. – Priggish

Answer 2

SELECT 'a' || ',' || 'b' AS letter will combine a letter. The result become 'a,b'

Devonian

the || operator concatenates strings – Term

Answer 3

It is a concat statement. It will concatenate the two strings.

Here is a helpful post!

What is the difference between "||" operator and concat function in Oracle?

Orva

Answer 4

It's a concatenation operator. So you would get 'a,b' from that. I think || will work on most RDBMS's. SQL Server requires the + operator (thanks to HVD for setting me straight!).

Lanita

Microsoft SQL Server is one of the exceptions: it doesn't support ||, and requires +. – Godfry

Answer 5

In Oracle, SQLite3, and MySQL, it concatenates strings. Please see the Oracle documentation. The MySQL documentation.

Also, it's part of ANSI SQL, but read this for more information.

Antimatter

Answer 6

in oracle its a shortcut for concatenate

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/operators003.htm

Paphian