Question

a noob question here!

I wrote this query, but the “group by” is very stupid…
so, how can I correct this?

SELECT
    COUNT(*) AS total,
    'x' as test
    FROM
contents
    WHERE name LIKE 'C%'
GROUP BY
    test
ORDER BY id ASC

different solutions and info about performances are welcome ( maybe using DISTINCT? )

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This should perform as well as any other option –

SELECT
    LEFT(name, 1) AS first_letter,
    COUNT(*) AS total
FROM contents
GROUP BY first_letter

If you want to run this query for a single letter at a time you can add the WHERE clause and drop the GROUP BY –

SELECT COUNT(*) AS total
FROM contents
WHERE name LIKE 'a%'