How do I avoid character encoding when using “FOR XML PATH”?

Question

I\'m looking to create a comma-separated list of values from a SQL Server 2005 table, just like in JanetOhara\'s question. I\'m using a query similar to the one presented i

Answer 1

See this post on Creating concatenated delimited string from a SQL result set and avoid character encoding when using “FOR XML PATH”

An alternate approach would be to rely on concatenation of characters (of course sql is not great with string operations as it is developed to work with set theory)

USE tempdb;
GO 

CREATE TABLE dbo.x ( y NVARCHAR(255) );
INSERT dbo.x
SELECT 'Sports & Recreation'
UNION ALL
SELECT 'x >= y'
UNION ALL
SELECT 'blat'
UNION ALL
SELECT '';

DECLARE @delimitedText varchar(max)
SET @delimitedText=''
SELECT @delimitedText += CASE WHEN LEN(@delimitedText) > 0 THEN +','+ y ELSE y END
FROM dbo.x 

SELECT @delimitedText
GO
DROP TABLE dbo.x;
GO