nested if statements within Load

[#1]

Hi,  I've got 2 fields jaProjectID and jfProjectID and I want combinedProjectID in the 3rd column

The data (simplified) is like so:

jaProjectID     jfProjectID     combinedProjectID

30                    -                    30

31                    -                    31

-                      P40                P40  <--using Alt results in '-'.  Seems like it doesn't like alphanumeric mix.

-                      -                     -

My load function:

LOAD

  jaProjectID

, jfProjectID

, if(not IsNull(jfProjectID), jfProjectID, if(not isNull(jaProjectID), jaProjectID, '*')) as combinedProjectID

//Alt(jaProject, jfProjectID as combinedProjectID   <--   doesn't seem to recognise non-numbers and shows as "-"

- the nested "if" statement looks messy -- so I tried this but doesn't work

LOAD

  jaProjectID

, jfProjectID

, If (IsNULL(jaProjectID) and IsNull(jfProjectID)) then

    <show *>

  else <....>

Question: is there another way (eg. case statements, switch or something) to replace this mess: if(not IsNull(jfProjectID), jfProjectID, if(not isNull(jaProjectID), jaProjectID, '*'))?

[Gysbert_Wassenaar]

If one of the two fields jaProjectID and jfProjectID is always null you can simply concatenate the two fields:

LOAD

     jaProjectID,

     jfProjectID ,  

     jaProjectID & jfProjectID as combinedProjectID

From ...

[#3]

Thanks, Gysbert, I appreciate it.  That would be really useful in part of my real code .

For this situation, I think it looks like I'm stuck with a messy nested if statement.  I was hoping there was something similar to the CASE statement in SQL.  Because sometimes they are both null and then I want it to show '*'.

[#4]

Try Alt function.