DISTINCT Question

[Anon]

Hi Guys,
If i have the following code:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT suburb FROM $table WHERE LEFT(suburb,1) = '$alphabet' ORDER BY suburb",$db);

Am i able to SELECT DISTINCT suburb, CatID?
I don't want CatID to be affected by the DISTINCT keyword?

Are you even able to do this?
Any ideas?

Cheers,
maccam

[Anon]

I don't understand how you could select distinct rows from one column and not "affect" another column. Suppose you have these three rows. What do you what returned?

suburb catID

---

black 1
blue 2
black 3

[Anon]

Thanks for the reply tom.

In your example i would want black to display on the page once with the number 2 (number of results) next to it.
blue would obviously appear once with the number value of 1 next to it.

[Anon]

Oh. You don't want a DISTINCT at all, you want to GROUP BY the column

$result = mysql_query("SELECT suburb, count(CatID) FROM $table WHERE LEFT(suburb,1) = '$alphabet' GROUP BY suburb ORDER BY suburb",$db);

[Anon]

Thanks Tom....that was exactly what i needed