Question

For some reason this query isnt working.

<p align="center">
<?php
$result1 = mysql_query("SELECT name FROM comics GROUP BY name ORDER BY name ASC");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result1))
{
?>
<a href="?sort=<?php echo substr($row['name'], 0, 1); ?>"><?php echo substr($row['name'], 0, 1); ?></a>&nbsp;    
<?php } ?>    
</p> 

The Output

2  2  3  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  A  V  V  V  V  Z  

instead of it going through and grouping by the name and then breaking it down by first letter and just displaying one letter it displays them all.

any help?

Answer 1

You GROUP BY the full name in SQL; than you iterate the result in PHP and display the first letter only; of course if your table contains e.g.

Abc
Ade
Afg

GROUP BY name would return them all; and displaying only the first letter will print “A” three times.

If you only want to retrieve the first letters you could try

SELECT
 LEFT( name, 1 ) AS fl 
FROM 
 ...
GROUP BY
 fl