Display column results by matches

[Anon]

Ok...this is probably really easy. I can't remember running across a piece of code that does this (if I have I just don't remember). What I need it to basically get results that show all the data from a column and then add up the matches. The table for example is a country_name identifier so the column looks something like this:

NULL
united_states
china
NULL
united_states
sweden

etc etc....

I want a simple script that can just tally this data up and give me totals on all the matches, so:

china: 1
NULL: 2
united states: 2
sweden: 1

If anyone can help point me in the right direction for this I would appriciate it. An existing tutorial page would be great.

Thanks,
Jim

[crusty_php]

SELECT country_name, COUNT(*) as count FROM countries GROUP BY country_name;