Merging two or more string variables into a single variable can be useful. Learn how to merge variables such as FirstName & LastName; or Address1 & Address2 & Address3; by using SPSS's Concatenation function.

1. Concatenating String Variables
in IBM SPSS Statistics

2. What is Concatenating?
 Merging two or more sting variables into a single variable is
called concatenating variables
 This function can be very useful if you are working with string
data in SPSS
 One common use of this function is to bring first name and
last name from two variables into one single full name
variable
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3. How to Concatenate?
 String Variables can be concatenated in IBM SPSS Statistics
using the CONCAT function
 The following syntax demonstrates using a compute
command to bring three single name variables together into
a single variable, which combines the three into a full name
variable
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4.  The first piece of syntax simply creates a datafile in SPSS to
be worked with -
• DATA LIST
/First_Name 1-4(A) Initial 5-6(A) Last_Name 6-20(A).
BEGIN DATA
Rob E Barry
Ian L O'Connell
Ted W Payne
Rod G Early
Con T Not
Cat P Murphy
Pat C Clifford
Bob A O'Sullivan
END DATA.
CONCAT Function in Syntax
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5.  The STRING function below creates a string variable with 64
characters allocated to it-
• STRING Full_Name(A64)
 The CONCAT Function is then used to combine the three
variables ‘First_Name’, ‘Initial’ and ‘Last_Name’
 Notice how CONCAT needs to use the functions ‘rtrim’ and
‘trim’, which remove any blank spaces on the left side (ltrim)
and the right side (rtrim)
• COMPUTE Full_Name =CONCAT(rtrim(ltrim(First_Name)),"
",rtrim(ltrim(Initial))," ",rtrim(ltrim(Last_Name))).
EXEUTE.
CONCAT Function in Syntax
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