mysql select confusion

Hello,

What I am trying to do seems straight forward, but I am having a little trouble.

What I would like to do is select all the names in my database that start with the number or name chosen.

IE: if the user clicks on the letter "A" I want to select all records that start with the letter "A."

I can do "SELECT * FROM mytable";

but want "SELECT * FROM mytable "that start with $letter_clicked_on";

I can pass the variable of the letter or number chosen, but don't know how to limit the results to names that start with that character.

Sorry if this is extremely basic, but I haven't found a post that covers this and is as basic as this question.

Thanks in advance!

Don

You will need to use LIKE:

SELECT *
  FROM MyTable
 WHERE col1 LIKE "A%"

% is the multi character wildcard for MySQL, you may need to use a different wildcard depending on your database.