fn:concat - XPath XQuery Reference

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XPath/XQuery concat function

Summary

Returns the concatenation of the string values of the arguments.

Operator Mapping

The two-argument form of this function defines the semantics of the "||" operator.

Signature

fn:concat(

$arg1 as xs:anyAtomicType?,
$arg2 as xs:anyAtomicType?,
$... as xs:anyAtomicType?

) as xs:string

Properties

This function is deterministic, context-independent, and focus-independent.

Rules

This function accepts two or more xs:anyAtomicType arguments and casts each one to xs:string. The function returns the xs:string that is the concatenation of the values of its arguments after conversion. If any argument is the empty sequence, that argument is treated as the zero-length string.

The fn:concat function is specified to allow two or more arguments, which are concatenated together. This is the only function specified in this document that allows a variable number of arguments. This capability is retained for compatibility with .

The expression fn:concat('un', 'grateful') returns "ungrateful".

The expression fn:concat('Thy ', (), 'old ', "groans", "", ' ring', ' yet', ' in', ' my', ' ancient',' ears.') returns "Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears.".

The expression fn:concat('Ciao!',()) returns "Ciao!".

The expression fn:concat('Ingratitude, ', 'thou ', 'marble-hearted', ' fiend!') returns "Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend!".

The expression fn:concat(01, 02, 03, 04, true()) returns "1234true".

The expression 10 || '/' || 6 returns "10/6".

How the concat function with two pipes works in XPath and XQuery

As mentioned in Unicode normalization is not automatically applied to the result of fn:concat. If a normalized result is required, fn:normalize-unicode can be applied to the xs:string returned by fn:concat. The following XQuery:

let $v1 := "I plan to go to Mu" let $v2 := "?nchen in September" return concat($v1, $v2)

where the "?" represents either the actual Unicode character COMBINING DIARESIS (Unicode codepoint U+0308) or "̈", will return:

"I plan to go to Mu?nchen in September"

where the "?" represents either the actual Unicode character COMBINING DIARESIS (Unicode codepoint U+0308) or "̈". It is worth noting that the returned value is not normalized in NFC; however, it is normalized in NFD.

However, the following XQuery:

let $v1 := "I plan to go to Mu" let $v2 := "?nchen in September" return normalize-unicode(concat($v1, $v2))

where the "?" represents either the actual Unicode character COMBINING DIARESIS (Unicode codepoint U+0308) or "̈", will return:

"I plan to go to München in September"

This returned result is normalized in NFC.