how to concat two columns into one with the existing column name in mysql?

Question

I want to concatenate two columns in a table with a existing column name using mysql.

An example: I am having a column FIRSTNAME and LASTNAME

Answer 1

As aziz-shaikh has pointed out, there is no way to suppress an individual column from the * directive, however you might be able to use the following hack:

SELECT CONCAT(c.FIRSTNAME, ',', c.LASTNAME) AS FIRSTNAME,
       c.*
FROM   `customer` c;

Doing this will cause the second occurrence of the FIRSTNAME column to adopt the alias FIRSTNAME_1 so you should be able to safely address your customised FIRSTNAME column. You need to alias the table because * in any position other than at the start will fail if not aliased.

Hope that helps!