counting seperate entries

[pablodelapena]

Is there a simple way to count the number of different occurances of a string in a cell when theya re unknown?

i.e: Say i ahve a table which records people's names. I don't know everyname in the world so want MySQL to count how many different entries there are. eg:

in table there is this variety of names:
Pablo
Andrew
Rachael
Lucy
Graeme
Lucy
Paul
Paul
Andrew

How can I get MySQL/PHP to tell me that this table contains 6 different names and not 9 rows?

Clear, or not really?

[mrhappiness]

i guess SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT column)) is worth a try

[pablodelapena]

excellent. but how do i deal with the results? how could i print a list of each different name and then print how many tiems it appears beside it.

[mrhappiness]

that's something completely different

SELECT name, COUNT(name)
FROM tble
GROUP BY name

should do it