Neet trick Ian!

I quickly made a script to return columns for a table but your trick was way cooler. 🙂

But if you're somewhere in a deserted island without a nifty GUI some thing like this might help.

CREATE procedure util_GetColumnNames

(

@TableName varchar (100),

@Delimiter varchar (10) = ',',

@AsRow bit = 0

)

as

if not exists(select 1 from sys.objects where type = 'U' and Name = @TableName)

print 'Table does not exist.'

else

if (@AsRow = 1)

begin

declare @cols varchar(2000)

SELECT @cols = ISNULL(@cols + @Delimiter + '[' + C.Name + ']',

'[' + C.Name + ']')

FROM sys.objects O

inner join sys.columns C

ON O.object_id = C.object_id

where type = 'U'

and O.Name = @TableName

SELECT @cols

end

else

select '[' + C.Name + ']' + @Delimiter

from sys.objects O

inner join sys.columns C

ON O.object_id = C.object_id

where type = 'U'

and O.Name = @TableName

This still returns a trailing delimiter in the last row, but Im not bothering to fix it.

/Martin