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Combining two fields

I can't figure out how to take the data (text) from two fields (varchar) and put them together in a third field. Right now, I have: 
field1: abcd
field2: 1111

I'd like to have: 

field3: abcd1111

Can you help me?

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Use: 
UPDATE table SET field3 = CONCAT(field1, field2)

Check out this list of string functions. This concatenation can be done automatically by adding BEFORE triggers on INSERT and UPDATE.

Within the trigger, set 

NEW.field3 = CONCAT(NEW.field1, NEW.field2)

You can find out more about triggers in MySQL at: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/triggers.html.

This was first published in March 2007

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