Question

I have a table like this:

id | name 
----------------
 1 | àbbot
 2 | about
 3 | zorro

I want to select the first letters in a case-insensitive context, like this:

let
----------
a
z

But any of those, with any unicode collation, gives the same wrong result:

SELECT LOWER(SUBSTR(name,1,1)) AS let FROM t GROUP BY let

SELECT LOWER(SUBSTR(name,1,1)) AS let FROM t GROUP BY letter ORDER BY let ASC

SELECT * FROM
     (SELECT LOWER(SUBSTR(name,1,1)) AS let FROM t ORDER BY let DESC) AS x
GROUP BY let ORDER BY let ASC

Wrong result:

let
----------
à
z

Is there a way to fix the ordering, without casting? (because I have to cover non-Latin languages too, such as Japanese).

Maybe I have an old version of MySQL… Can you test queries in your environment, please?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

nevermind, found a solution

SELECT UPPER(SUBSTR(name,1,1)) AS let FROM 
    (SELECT name FROM t ORDER BY name DESC) AS x
GROUP BY let ORDER BY let ASC