Concatenate the Name and the Profession - Practice Coding Problems

Concatenate the Name and the Profession - Problem

Database Easy

You are given a table Person with information about people and their professions.

Task: Write a SQL query to report each person's name followed by the first letter of their profession enclosed in parentheses.

Requirements:

Concatenate the name with the first letter of the profession in parentheses
Return results ordered by person_id in descending order
The profession is an ENUM with values: 'Doctor', 'Singer', 'Actor', 'Player', 'Engineer', 'Lawyer'

Table Schema

Person

Column Name	Type	Description
`person_id` PK	int	Primary key, unique identifier for each person
`name`	varchar	Full name of the person
`profession`	ENUM	Profession (Doctor, Singer, Actor, Player, Engineer, Lawyer)

Primary Key: person_id

Note: The profession column contains predefined values representing different career types

Input & Output

Example 1 — Basic Concatenation

Input Table:

person_id	name	profession
1	Alex	Singer
3	Alice	Lawyer
2	Bob	Doctor

Output:

name_profession
Alice(L)
Bob(D)
Alex(S)

💡 Note:

The query extracts the first letter of each profession: Singer → 'S', Lawyer → 'L', Doctor → 'D'. Then concatenates each name with the first letter in parentheses. Results are ordered by person_id in descending order (3, 2, 1).

Example 2 — Different Professions

Input Table:

person_id	name	profession
4	John	Engineer
5	Mary	Actor
6	Tom	Player

Output:

name_profession
Tom(P)
Mary(A)
John(E)

💡 Note:

Shows different profession types: Engineer → 'E', Actor → 'A', Player → 'P'. Results ordered by person_id DESC (6, 5, 4), demonstrating the consistent pattern across all profession types.

Constraints

1 ≤ person_id ≤ 1000
1 ≤ name.length ≤ 100
profession is one of ['Doctor', 'Singer', 'Actor', 'Player', 'Engineer', 'Lawyer']

Visualization

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Understanding the Visualization

Input

Person table with id, name, profession

Process

Extract first letter and concatenate

Output

Formatted name with profession initial

Key Takeaway

🎯 Key Insight: String functions like CONCAT and SUBSTRING are perfect for formatting output by combining and extracting parts of text data

Asked in

a Amazon 12 M Microsoft 8 🍎 Apple 6

Use CONCAT function with SUBSTRING(profession, 1, 1) to extract the first letter and combine it with the name in the required format.

Table Schema

Person

Column Name	Type	Description
`person_id` PK	int	Primary key, unique identifier for each person
`name`	varchar	Full name of the person
`profession`	ENUM	Profession (Doctor, Singer, Actor, Player, Engineer, Lawyer)

Primary Key: person_id

Note: The profession column contains predefined values representing different career types

Common Approaches

Approach	Time	Space	Notes
✓ String Concatenation with SUBSTRING	O(n)	O(1)	Use CONCAT and SUBSTRING to combine name with first letter of profession

String Concatenation with SUBSTRING — Algorithm Steps

Step 1: Use SUBSTRING to extract first character of profession
Step 2: Use CONCAT to combine name, '(', first letter, and ')'
Step 3: Order results by person_id DESC

Visualization

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Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Extract

Get first letter with SUBSTRING

Concatenate

Combine name + '(' + letter + ')'

Order

Sort by person_id DESC

Code -

solution.c — C

Time & Space Complexity

Time Complexity

⏱️

O(n)

Single pass through all rows with string operations

✓ Linear Growth

Space Complexity

O(1)

No additional space needed beyond result set

✓ Linear Space

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Smart Actions

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Table Schema

Input & Output

Constraints

Visualization

Related Problems

Table Schema

Common Approaches

String Concatenation with SUBSTRING — Algorithm Steps

Visualization

Code -

Time & Space Complexity

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