String Concatenation in MySQL: Unveiling the CONCAT Function

When performing string concatenation in MySQL, beginners often encounter difficulties similar to the following:

"I'm facing an issue when attempting to concatenate two columns, 'last_name' and 'first_name'. Using the syntax 'select first_name last_name as "Name" from test.student' doesn't seem to work."

To resolve this, it's crucial to understand that MySQL differs from other DBMSs in its handling of string concatenation. Unlike most systems that employ the ' ' operator for concatenation, MySQL utilizes the CONCAT function.

Thus, the correct syntax for concatenating strings in MySQL is:

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

In this example, ' ' represents the space character used to separate the first and last names.

MySQL also provides the CONCAT_WS function (Concatenate With Separator), a specialized form of CONCAT():

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

Furthermore, if you desire to treat the || operator as a string concatenation operator instead of its default use as a synonym for OR, you can enable the PIPES_AS_CONCAT SQL mode.