Accepts a list of fields and returns the first value that is not null or empty. For example, when accessing a value that may exist in any number of potential fields, a case statement could be used to select between the fields to identify the value from the collection of fields. Using coalesce() returns the first matching value across the selection of supplied fields. If empty string values should be returned instead of being ignored, the ignoreEmpty parameter can be set to false to change the behavior.

ParameterTypeRequiredDefault ValueDescription
asstringoptional[a] _coalesce The field that contains the selected value, if any non-null value is found.
expressions[b]list of expressionsrequired   The list of expression candidates to select from; the first non-null result from left to right is used.
ignoreEmptybooleanoptional[a] true If true, empty strings are treated as undefined values, that is, they are not selected.

[a] Optional parameters use their default value unless explicitly set.

[b] The parameter name expressions can be omitted.

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coalesce() Examples

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Find the First Values in a List of Fields

Find the first values of a list of fields to normalize data using the coalesce() function