Match first character only in a field

[rmfrance]

I'm trying to speed up my site by reducing the number of fields that I need to update in my mysql database.
What I want is a search string that will check the first character in the field so that I can group all "A's", "B's", together, etc...
ie.
Arnold
Amanda
Brett
Craig

... I don't want Craig to be included in the 'A' list because he has an 'A' in his name. He shold be in 'C'. The way I used to do it was have a field named 'Letter' which sorted it. But this is one of the fields I'm trying to avoid.
Please help!!!

 

[piti]

i don't know if this will work, but try:

group by LEFT(NameField, 1)

 

[zephan]

Hi, you've got to way to do it : extract the 1st char with the mysql SUBSTRING function wich syntax is
SUBSTRING(str FROM pos FOR len)

(visit

http://www.mysql.com/doc/S/t/String_functions.html)

e. g.
select SUBSTRING('Quadratically',5,6);

you can use also equivalent string functions from your programming language (php and perl provide such functions).

 

[zephan]

piti is somehow right :
SUBSTR can replace LEFT function

select SUBSTR(field_name, 1,1) as first_letter
FROM table_name
group by first_letter