A function that converts and concatenates expressions into a string.
Description
STRING converts one or more strings to the STRING format,
and then concatenates these strings into a single string. No case transformation is performed.
STRING converts numerics to their canonical form before string
conversion. It therefore performs arithmetic operations, removes leading
and trailing zeros and leading plus signs from numbers.
If any of the string arguments is NULL or
the empty string (''), STRING concatenates all other arguments and removes NULL
and the empty string from the concatenation. If all of the string arguments are NULL, STRING returns
NULL. If all of the string arguments are the empty
string (''), STRING returns the empty string. STRING retains whitespace.
You can use the %SQLSTRING function to convert a data value for case-sensitive string comparison,
or the %SQLUPPER function to convert
a data value for not case-sensitive string comparison.
Examples
In the following example, STRING concatenates three substrings into a single string. The example shows the handling of blank spaces, the empty string, and NULL:
SELECT STRING('a','b','c'),
STRING('a',' ','c'),
STRING('a','','c'),
STRING('a',NULL,'c')
In the following example, STRING converts numerics into a string. All of these STRING functions return the string '123':
SELECT STRING(123),
STRING(+00123.00),
STRING('1',23),
STRING(1,(10*2)+3)
In the following example, STRING retrieves
sample data from fields and concatenates it into a string:
SELECT STRING(Name,Age)
FROM Sample.Person