How can I combine multiple rows into a comma-delimited list in Oracle? [duplicate]

I have a simple query:

select * from countries

with the following results:

country_name
------------
Albania
Andorra
Antigua
.....

I would like to return the results in one row, so like this:

Albania, Andorra, Antigua, ...

Of course, I can write a PL/SQL function to do the job (I already did in Oracle 10g), but is there a nicer, preferably non-Oracle-specific solution (or may be a built-in function) for this task?

I would generally use it to avoid multiple rows in a sub-query, so if a person has more then one citizenship, I do not want her/him to be a duplicate in the list.

My question is based on the similar question on SQL server 2005.

UPDATE: My function looks like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION APPEND_FIELD (sqlstr in varchar2, sep in varchar2 ) return varchar2 is
ret varchar2(4000) := '';
TYPE cur_typ IS REF CURSOR;
rec cur_typ;
field varchar2(4000);
begin
     OPEN rec FOR sqlstr;
     LOOP
         FETCH rec INTO field;
         EXIT WHEN rec%NOTFOUND;
         ret := ret || field || sep;
     END LOOP;
     if length(ret) = 0 then
          RETURN '';
     else
          RETURN substr(ret,1,length(ret)-length(sep));
     end if;
end;

Solution 1:

The WM_CONCAT function (if included in your database, pre Oracle 11.2) or LISTAGG (starting Oracle 11.2) should do the trick nicely. For example, this gets a comma-delimited list of the table names in your schema:

select listagg(table_name, ', ') within group (order by table_name) 
  from user_tables;

or

select wm_concat(table_name) 
  from user_tables;

More details/options

Link to documentation

Solution 2:

Here is a simple way without stragg or creating a function.

create table countries ( country_name varchar2 (100));

insert into countries values ('Albania');

insert into countries values ('Andorra');

insert into countries values ('Antigua');


SELECT SUBSTR (SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH (country_name , ','), 2) csv
      FROM (SELECT country_name , ROW_NUMBER () OVER (ORDER BY country_name ) rn,
                   COUNT (*) OVER () cnt
              FROM countries)
     WHERE rn = cnt
START WITH rn = 1
CONNECT BY rn = PRIOR rn + 1;

CSV                                                                             
--------------------------
Albania,Andorra,Antigua                                                         

1 row selected.

As others have mentioned, if you are on 11g R2 or greater, you can now use listagg which is much simpler.

select listagg(country_name,', ') within group(order by country_name) csv
  from countries;

CSV                                                                             
--------------------------
Albania, Andorra, Antigua

1 row selected.

Solution 3:

You can use this as well:

SELECT RTRIM (
          XMLAGG (XMLELEMENT (e, country_name || ',')).EXTRACT ('//text()'),
          ',')
          country_name
  FROM countries;