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Using Pipe like symbols to add parentheses??

Author

Topic

Butterfly82
Starting Member

30 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 16:44:49

Hi all,

I was told recently that doing the following:

SELECT ProductName ||' , '|| Category FROM PRODUCTS

would add parentheses around the ProductName field data. However, after trying it out for myself I found it did no such thing.

Does this look familiar to anyone? Is it syntax I have wrong or something?

Butterfly82

Van
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

462 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 16:56:48

Select '('+ProductName+')' from Products

Butterfly82
Starting Member

30 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 17:04:39

quote:
Originally posted by Van

Select '('+ProductName+')' from Products

Thanks for the feedback Van. Sorry for the obviously simple question, I looked on BOL before hand but guess I was looking for the wrong thing. I was searching for 'Pipe' etc.

Butterfly82

Van
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

462 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 17:07:16

If you search for | (not pipe), you will find some stuff in BOL but I don't think it's realated to what you were wanting to do.

Butterfly82
Starting Member

30 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 17:38:00

Yeah, I've came across it in programming languages such as C etc. with a single pipe (|) being Bitwise Inclusive OR and the double pipe (||) being the Logical OR. As it stands with SQL though I don't know it's meaning, if any.

I checked out BOL once again, just out of curiosity to find the meaning of | relating to SQL or any articles on it but it didn't come up with anything, I must be looking in the wrong place if you say it came up with something when you carried out the same search.

This is the location I carry out my searches from:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130214.aspx

Van
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

462 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 17:49:41

I came up with the same thing you said about bitwise and logical OR. I was looking on BOL for 2005. I didn't read it carefully though so it may not even have been talking about t-sql.

Butterfly82
Starting Member

30 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 17:57:11

Ok, thanks Van.
I have the same issue when it comes to searching for the plus (+) symbol or even ‘concatenation’. I searched for concatenation because that is what it seems to be doing. Is there a name for carrying out:

'('+ProductName+')'

that you know if?

Haywood
Posting Yak Master

221 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 18:18:01

quote:
Originally posted by Butterfly82

Yeah, I've came across it in programming languages such as C etc. with a single pipe (|) being Bitwise Inclusive OR and the double pipe (||) being the Logical OR. As it stands with SQL though I don't know it's meaning, if any.

|, ~, ^ and & are bitwise operators for SQL Server....

Butterfly82
Starting Member

30 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 18:59:55

quote:
Originally posted by Haywood
|, ~, ^ and & are bitwise operators for SQL Server....

Thanks for that Haywood, very much appreciated.

Do you know the correct name for this operation in SQL?

'...'+ ... +'...'

for example:

'('+ProductName+')'

Thank you

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 19:43:43

quote:
Originally posted by Butterfly82

Do you know the correct name for this operation in SQL?

'...'+ ... +'...'

for example:

'('+ProductName+')'

+ is used to concatenate strings together. In VB, you use &. In T-SQL, it's +.

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Butterfly82
Starting Member

30 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-20 : 19:58:16

Thanks T Kizer,

I thought it was to concatenate strings but couldn't find anything on BOL. After your post though I went back and tried again and I found this:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175524.aspx

Thanks again

PS I think I'm finally getting to grips with BOL...lol

madhivanan
Premature Yak Congratulator

22864 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-21 : 00:51:45

Read about + (String Concatenation) in sql server help file

Madhivanan

Failing to plan is Planning to fail

LoztInSpace
Aged Yak Warrior

940 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-21 : 03:10:10

|| is the ansi standard for string concatenation. Believe it or not, the use of + is non-standard!
Your query would work in, say, Oracle so maybe you're looking at a port.

Just to clarify - it doesn't add any parethesis or anything, it just does what the + operator does. Others have given you how to put something in parenthesis, but if you want identical results to the original query, simply replace || with +.

Butterfly82
Starting Member

30 Posts

Posted - 2007-11-21 : 09:58:39

LozInSpace, thanks for your feedback, it's great information. I thought || must have had some function in SQL because when I typed it into SSMS it grayed out. I'll be sure to read up on it in more detail and try it out.

Thanks for all your help guys
Butterfly82

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