order by index

[Anon]

I am creating a query string where i like to sort the data by index character..

eg: clicking on a link [a] should list all the records starts with letter a... but can't get it working

$result=mysql_query("SELECT firstname, lastname, nickname,email,UNIX_TIMESTAMP(birthday),UNIX_TIMESTAMP(anny) FROM addressbook WHERE userid='$userid' AND substr(firstname,0,1)='$lower_char' or substr(firstname,0,1)='$up_char'");

What i am doing wrong???

please help

[[deleted]]

Simple logic error:

WHERE userid='$userid' AND substr(firstname,0,1)='$lower_char' or substr(firstname,0,1)='$up_char'");

What you are doing is:

WHERE A AND b OR c;

But what you want is:

WHERE a AND (n OR c);

A much faster approach would be:

WHERE userid=$userid
AND LOWER(firstname) LIKE '$lower_char%';

that will convert the firstname to lowercase, and then compare it against $lowerchar followed by a wildcard, a bit like 'a*'. That is much faster than using substring to grab one character (twice) and comparing it against two characters.