Here is a direct quote from the ORACLE manual:
<quote>
On most platforms, the concatenation operator is two solid vertical bars, as shown in Table 3-3. However, some IBM
platformsuse broken vertical bars for this operator. When moving SQL script files between systems having different
charactersets, such as between ASCII and EBCDIC, vertical bars might not be translated into the vertical bar required
bythe target Oracle environment. Oracle provides the CONCAT character function as an alternative to the vertical bar
operatorfor cases when it is difficult or impossible to control translation performed by operating system or network
utilities.Use this function in applications that will be moved between environments with differing character sets.
</quote>
Tony Marston
http://www.tonymarston.net
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us wrote:
> Tony Marston wrote:
> > > which Oracle supports and MySQL can be made to support via a
> > > runtime option.
> >
> > They also both support CONCAT() because there are sometimes difficulties in
> > dealing with vertical bars in the character sets used by certain operating
> > systems and file systems. If enough database vendors offer it then it becmes
> > a "de facto" standard.
>
> I have never heard of problems with vertical bars in any of those
> settings. Can you elaborate? I don't see how operating systems and
> file system character sets relate to SQL query characters.
>
> --
> Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
> pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
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>