Select statement

[stephen]

Looking for a statement that will prevent doubles from showing up in a search.

If I have a SQL select statement that is reading 2 tables that may have the same records. Is is possible for me to search for a name pon multiple tables and only display it once in the results?

thanks

[Anon]

Use the DISTINCT keyword in your select.

SELECT DISTINCT stuff FROM etc...

[Anon]

add the keyword: 'distinct' to the query. like so:

select distinct name from nametable

[[deleted]]

Carefull, DISTINCT will list only one record from the table(s) for each unique value for a field.
Other records may be found, but they are simply ignored.

What exactly are you doing to with the data and what do you need to eliminate the doubles for?

[stephen]

Its a player database for statistics. After each season the years stats are added (one player per row)

first name, last name, stat1, stat2.

If I do a search on a player name I don't want a guy that has played 3 years to appear 3 times.

I just want his name to show up once with a link to his stat page.

thanks

[[deleted]]

In that case using a DISTINCT is ok,
but if you were for example creating a statistics page for all the players at the same time, using distinct would give only the results for the first time that each player appears in the table, so your data would not be complete.