Posted by Roy Harvey on 01/21/07 00:14

The problem is that NULL concatenated with NULL results in NULL. So
unless @list is initialized with something it will always remain NULL
no matter how many things care concatenated on.

declare @list varchar(20)
set @list = @list + 'banana'
select @list

set @list = ''
set @list = @list + 'banana'
select @list

--------------------
NULL

--------------------
banana

As you see, even ititilizing it to an empty string is enough.

Roy Harvey
Beacon Falls, CT

On 20 Jan 2007 14:06:47 -0800, lee@digital-interactive.com wrote:

>Hi
>
>This is a dumb question as I know it's fairly easy but I cant seem to
>find an example after two hours of searching.
>
>In a stored procedure I'm trying to build up a string eg,
>
>(the following is in a loop)
>
>IF @xcount > 0
>BEGIN
> Set @list = @list + @title + ': ' + @xcount
>END
>
>Problem is when I come to return @list, it's always NULL - when I know
>there should be data returned. Any ideas?
>
>Thanks
>Lee

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