I wonder what the difference is between concatenate, merge and join from the lexical point of view.
These words are often used in scientific or programming text. It seems to me that different authors use any of them with slightly different meaning. How should they be used from the language point of view?
Best Answer
To me, concatenate refers to the very specific operation of appending things in order, specifically abstract things. Words and ideas can be concatenated, but things in the real world are usually not said to be concatenated. The word is mostly used in programming discussion and other discussion involving strings.
Merge usually implies mixing; if two companies, two ideas, or two galaxies are merged, they are implied to form one new entity in which the previous two are not distinguishable as wholes. It is more vague than concatenate.
Join can mean many things and it often depends on the context. If two organizations are joined, they may remain two organizations but under a larger name or cause or goal. Join seems to imply, sometimes, that there is something connecting two or more entities but those entities are still distinguishable. The word is a lot less specific on its own than the other two, though.