Question

I have this query

SELECT  c1.Id, c1.Name as parent , c2.name as child
              FROM categories c1
                JOIN categories c2 ON c1.id = c2.parentid

please why my ouput on parent is momething like:

parent1 parent2 parent3 parent1

this is the full code :

<div id="categories" class="s_nav">
  <ul>
    <li id="menu_home"> <a href="/">Home</a> </li>
    <?
    $query = "SELECT  c1.Id, c1.Name as parent , c2.name as child
              FROM categories c1
                JOIN categories c2 ON c1.id = c2.parentid";

    $result = mysql_query($query);
    $parent = ''; 
    while ($next = @mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
       if ($next['parent'] != $parent) {
          if (strlen($parent) > 0) {
             echo "  </ul></div></li>";
          }
          echo "  <li><a href='#'>" . $next['parent']."</a>";
          echo "    <div class='s_submenu'><h3>".$next['parent']."</h3>
                      <ul class='s_list_1 clearfix'>";
       }
       echo '    <li> <a href="'. $next['child'].'.htm">' . $next['child'] . '</a></li>';

       $parent = $next['parent'];
    }
    echo "    </ul>";
    echo "  </li>";
    ?>
  </ul>
</div>

and this happens only if the first letter of a subcategory is the letter “A”

Answer 1

a) what is momething ?
b) what’s the output of the query when you run it directly in the DB ?
c) remove the @ so you’ll be able to see errors
d) As njk mentioned, you should use either MySQLi or PDO, mysql_* functions are deprecated!