Concatenation

This article is about the string operation of computer programming. For other uses, see Concatenation (disambiguation).

A spreadsheet's concatenate ("&") function is used to assemble a complex text string—in this example, XML code for an SVG "circle" element.

In formal language theory and computer programming, concatenation is the operation of joining sequential objects, such as character strings, files, lists or pieces of audio or video, end-to-end. For example, the concatenation of "snow" and "ball" is "snowball". In certain formalizations of concatenation theory, also called string theory, string concatenation is a primitive notion.