JOINCOLS

The JOINCOLS function joins the corresponding lines of two or more multiline text values. The function returns a multiline text value composed of the concatenated lines up to a length of 4,000 bytes (the maximum length of a single concatenated line).

The number of lines in the return value is always the same as that in the argument expression that has the most lines. When a given argument expression has fewer lines, JOINCOLS repeats its last line in each subsequent line of the return value. This repeating feature is useful when an argument expression is a single-line separator, such as a space or hyphen. See Example 7-137, "Joining the Columns of Two Text Expressions".

Return Value

TEXT or NTEXT

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

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

Parameters

first-expression: An expression whose lines JOINCOLS joins with those of next-expression. When the expression has a data type other than TEXT or NTEXT, JOINCOLS converts it to TEXT. JOINCOLS ignores any arguments that have a value of NA.
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, JOINCOLS converts it to TEXT. JOINCOLS ignores any arguments that have a value of NA.

Examples

Example 7-137 Joining the Columns of Two Text Expressions

In the following example, each line in citylist is joined with a quoted text value, and the corresponding line from cityreps.

citylist has the following values.

Boston
Houston
Chicago
Denver

cityrep has the following values.

Brady
Lopez
Alfonso
Cody

The JOINCOLS function

JOINCOLS(citylist ' -- ' cityreps)

returns the following.

Boston -- Brady
Houston -- Lopez
Chicago -- Alfonso
Denver -- Cody