Oracle || operator

The Oracle (PL/SQL) || operator can be used to concatenate two or more strings together.

Syntax

string1 || string2 [ || string_n ]

Parameters

`string1`	`Required.` Specify the first string to concatenate.
`string2`	`Required.` Specify the second string to concatenate.
`string_n`	`Optional.` Specify the nth string to concatenate.

Return Value

Returns the concatenated string.

Example 1:

The example below shows how to use || operator to concatenate two or more string values.

'Alpha' || 'Coding' || 'Skills'
Result: 'AlphaCodingSkills'

'10' || '20' || '30'
Result: '102030'

'10' || 20 || '30'
Result: '102030'

'10' || 20 || 30
Result: '102030'

'a' || 'b' || 'c' || 'd'
Result: 'abcd'

Example 2:

Two additional single quotes within the surrounding single quotation can be used to concatenate single quotes. See the example below:

SELECT 'Let' || '''' || 's learn Oracle';
Result: Let's learn Oracle

Example 3:

Consider a database table called Employee with the following records:

EmpID	FirstName	LastName
1	John	Smith
2	Marry	Knight
3	Jo	Williams
4	Kim	Fischer
5	Ramesh	Gupta
6	Huang	Zhang

In the query below, the || operator is used to concatenate records of column FirstName and column LastName.

SELECT Employee.*, 
FirstName || ' ' || LastName AS FullName 
FROM Employee;

This will produce the result as shown below:

EmpID	FirstName	LastName	FullName
1	John	Smith	John Smith
2	Marry	Knight	Marry Knight
3	Jo	Williams	Jo Williams
4	Kim	Fischer	Kim Fischer
5	Ramesh	Gupta	Ramesh Gupta
6	Huang	Zhang	Huang Zhang

❮ Oracle Functions