getting the most recent date column

[sfullman]

for the sake of simplicity I have two date fields in a table I'll call date1 and date2.

what is the most elegant way to get the earliest (in time) date of the two that is not null or zero? I could do this:

SELECT
IF(date1 IS NULL, date2, IF(date1 < date2, date1, date2))

but I'd like to know if there's a more elegant way.

In php I could just use MIN(date1, date2, date3, .. ) (other than the fact that date1 or 2 might be NULL) - but MIN() in SQL language means a different thing and doesn't take multiple arguments.

Thanks and happy thanksgiving!

[bradgrafelman]

MIN() is an aggregate function used when you GROUP data together.

The function that you're after, however, is called LEAST().

EDIT: Note, however, that "as of 5.0.13, it returns NULL if any argument is NULL." If you wanted the smallest non-null value... I'm not sure if there's a simple SQL function you could use for that.