displaying search results in a non repetitive way

[Jim_Madrid]

PHP & MYSQL

I have a taxonomic database of animal species (phylum, class, order, family, species, etc) and would like to know if there is a way to display search results without repeating each category for each species. In other words, I want to avoid example 1 and achieve example 2. That is, if the name of the species changes but the prior categories stay the same I don´t want to repeat every category.

Example 1 NO!

Class Order Family Species 1
Class Order Family Species 2
Class Order Family Species 3
Class Order 2 Family 2 Species 4
Class Order 2 Family 2 Species 5
Class Order 2 Family 2 Species 6
Class Order 2 Family 3 Species 7
Class Order 2 Family 3 Species 8

Example 2 YES!

Class Order Family Species 1
Species 2
Species 3
Order 2 Family 2 Species 4
Species 5
Species 6
Family 3 Species 7
Species 8

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

James

[xblue]

you can easily determine if the current order or family is equal to the last order or family. if not, display it.

example

$last_family = '';

// doesn't matter where the data is coming from
// the trick is always the same
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    if ($row['family'] != $last_family){
        echo $row['species']." ";
        $last_family = $row['family'];
    }
    // display rest of data
    echo $row['species']."<br>\n";
}

unset($last_family);