JOINCHARS

The JOINCHARS function joins two or more non-NA expressions as a single line text. JOINCHARS removes line breaks from the text it joins. (Use INSCHARS to preserve line breaks.)

When the length of the joined line exceeds 4,000 bytes, JOINCHARS automatically breaks the line and puts the remaining characters on the next line. When the line break would occur between the two bytes of a double-byte character, JOINCHARS does not split the double-byte character; instead, it puts both bytes of the double-byte character on the next line.

Tip:

When you are using a multibyte character set, you can use the JOINBYTES function instead of the JOINCHARS function.

Return Value

TEXT or NTEXT

The data type of the return value depends on the data type of the values specified for the arguments:

When all arguments are TEXT values, the return value is TEXT.
When all arguments are NTEXT values, the return value is NTEXT.
When the arguments include both TEXT and NTEXT values, the function converts all TEXT values to NTEXT before performing the function operation, and the return value is NTEXT.

Syntax

JOINCHARS(first-expression, next-expression...)

Parameters

first-expression: An expression to which JOINCHARS joins next-expression. When the first-expression has a data type other than TEXT or NTEXT, JOINCHARS converts it to TEXT.
next-expression...: One or more expressions to join with first-expression. When an expression you want to concatenate has a data type other than TEXT or NTEXT, JOINCHARS converts it to TEXT.

Examples

Example 7-136 Using JOINCHARS to Concatenate Values

This example shows how you can use JOINCHARS to combine text with the current values of the two variables name.product and price. The variable price has a data type of DECIMAL; however, JOINCHARS automatically converts its value to TEXT to join it with the other text values.

LIMIT product TO 'Canoes'
LIMIT month TO 'Dec96'

The JOINCHARS function

JOINCHARS('Current Price for ' name.product ' is:  $' price)

returns the following value.

Current Price for Aluminum Canoes is:  $200.03