[Resolved] Text within a mysql query

[sarah]

Really lame question, but how would I include text within a mySQL query. I am doing it with PHP right now, but it would be useful for me in the future to know how to include a space between the first and last names. Obviously, the query below doesn't work, but you get the idea...

select firstName.' '.lastName FROM mytable

[andrewm]

You want the CONCAT_WS function.

IE "select CONCAT_WS(' ', firstName, lastName) from mytable"

From: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/string-functions.html

CONCAT_WS(separator,str1,str2,...)

CONCAT_WS() stands for CONCAT With Separator and is a special form of CONCAT(). The first argument is the separator for the rest of the arguments. The separator is added between the strings to be concatenated. The separator can be a string as can the rest of the arguments. If the separator is NULL, the result is NULL. The function skips any NULL values after the separator argument.

mysql> SELECT CONCAT_WS(',','First name','Second name','Last Name');
-> 'First name,Second name,Last Name'
mysql> SELECT CONCAT_WS(',','First name',NULL,'Last Name');
-> 'First name,Last Name'

[sarah]

Forgot to say thanks. It worked. :-)