How Does MySQL Concatenate Strings?

Concatenating Strings in MySQL

In MySQL, concatenating strings differs slightly from common practices in other Database Management Systems (DBMSs). Unlike using operators such as or ||, MySQL utilizes the dedicated CONCAT function for string concatenation.

To concatenate the last_name and first_name columns, the following query should be used:

SELECT CONCAT(first_name, ' ', last_name) AS Name FROM test.student

This command employs the CONCAT function to merge the content of the first_name and last_name columns into a new Name column.

Additionally, MySQL provides the CONCAT_WS (Concatenate With Separator) function as a specialized version of CONCAT(). It allows for the inclusion of a separator character between concatenated strings:

SELECT CONCAT_WS(' ', first_name, last_name) from test.student

In the example above, a space character is used as the separator.

MySQL also offers an alternative method for performing string concatenation through the PIPES_AS_CONCAT SQL mode. Activating this mode permits the usage of || as a string concatenation operator, equivalent to the CONCAT() function:

SET PIPES_AS_CONCAT=1;
SELECT first_name || last_name AS Name FROM test.student;

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