Add a null value to a Varchar Value..

Question

Hi, I have 2 columns with "name" and "surname" I want to return a result with the two concatenated.

but I have a problem, the surname column accept null values and when it's the case the concatenation is null.. I would like in this case just to have the NAME

here is code:

SELECT 
    c.ID_CONT,
    c.ID_TYPE_CONTACT,
    c.ID_PARAM_CENTRE,
    c.FONCTION_CONT,
    c.MEMO_CONT,
    c.VISIBLE_CONT,
    c.NAME_CONT +' '+c.SURNAME_CONT as NAMESURNAME      
FROM dbo.CONTACT c 

It's works when Surname is blank or fulled..

Tx a lot..

Answer 1

Try this:

isnull(c.NAME_CONT +' ', '')+isnull(c.SURNAME_CONT,'')

Answer 2

there's a function ISNULL(expression, replacement_value)

refer to msdn manual

so you could do:

SELECT 
    c.ID_CONT,
    c.ID_TYPE_CONTACT,
    c.ID_PARAM_CENTRE,
    c.FONCTION_CONT,
    c.MEMO_CONT,
    c.VISIBLE_CONT,
    c.NAME_CONT +' '+ISNULL(c.SURNAME_CONT, '') as NAMESURNAME      
FROM dbo.CONTACT c 

Answer 3

Consider omitting the space separating character when SURNAME_CONT is the NULL value. Also consider handling when SURNAME_CONT is the empty string. COALESCE is Standard SQL e.g.

c.NAME_CONT + COALESCE(' ' + NULLIF(c.SURNAME_CONT, ''), '')