topic Re: SQL While do loops in Data Engineering

SQL While do loops

elgeo — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 10:45:43 GMT

Hello. Could you please suggest a workaround for a while do loop in Databricks SQL?

WHILE LSTART>0 DO SET LSTRING=CONCAT(LSTRING, VSTRING2)

Thank you in advance

Re: SQL While do loops

ashishasr — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:10:05 GMT

hi, In Databricks SQL stored procedures (Unity Catalog, DBR ≥ 17.0), the WHILE ... DO loop is supported,
equivalent code for this,

WHILE LSTART > 0 DO SET LSTRING = CONCAT(LSTRING, VSTRING2); END WHILE;

Re: SQL While do loops

szymon_dybczak — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:48:09 GMT

Hi, yes it's possbile. Refer to below thread:

SQL Stored Procedure in Databricks - Databricks Community - 133371

Re: SQL While do loops

nayan_wylde — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 14:01:52 GMT

@elgeo Here are two alternatives.

1. Use a recursive CTE

WITH RECURSIVE loop_cte (lstart, lstring) AS ( SELECT 5 AS lstart, '' AS lstring UNION ALL SELECT lstart - 1, CONCAT(lstring, 'VSTRING2') FROM loop_cte WHERE lstart > 1 ) SELECT * FROM loop_cte;

2. you can use pyspark. If you are running the code in notebook.

lstart = 5 lstring = "" vstring2 = "VSTRING2" while lstart > 0: lstring += vstring2 lstart -= 1