How to concatenate multiple records into one

Question

Hi everybody:
I want to know if exist some way to concat multiple records into one without using cursors. For example, I have a table named "Authors" like this:
Lan|Author
English|Ernest Hemingway
Spanish|Octavio Paz
Spanish|Mario Vargas Llosa
English|Sinclair Lewis
Spanish|Gabriel García Márquez
And I want to get this:
Author
Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez
I have worked with SQL Server and I can do something like this:
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.MyConcat (@lan varchar(10))
RETURNS varchar(5000) AS
BEGIN
declare @retvalue varchar(5000)
set @retvalue=''
select @retvalue = @retvalue + Author +',' from Authors where lan = @lan
return substring(@retvalue,1,len(@retvalue)-1)
END
ie, do not use cursors to concatenate records. However, with ORACLE, I have to do someting like this.
FUNCTION MyConcat(P_Lan IN VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 IS
v_ret VARCHAR2(4000);
v_element VARCHAR2(4000);
v_cursor sys_refcursor;
BEGIN
OPEN v_cursor FOR SELECT Author FROM Authors where Lan = P_Lan
LOOP
FETCH v_cursor INTO v_elemento;
EXIT WHEN v_cursor%NOTFOUND;
IF v_ret IS NULL THEN
v_ret := v_element;
ELSE
v_ret := v_ret || ', ' || v_element;
END IF;
END LOOP;
RETURN v_ret;
END;
Exist some other way to do this?
Best Regards
Jack

Answer 1

Tks both for answer... I forgot to mention that I am using Oracle 10g. I read about LISTAGG() but this function is available for Oracle 11g release 2.
I wil read about the other techniques than Hoek mention
Best Regards.
Jack