need help formulating difficult query

[etones]

First I will give an example of the table in question.

id | country | inuse | reference
------------------------------------------------
1 | UK | 1 | 44
2 | UK | 1 | 514
3 | UK | 0 | 221
4 | USA | 1 | 993
5 | USA | 0 | 472
6 | USA | 1 | 092

I want to write a query that will list every distinct country and will also list any one id along with it. Here is an example of what i would like produced.

id | country
-------------------
1 | UK
4 | USA

The way i do it at the moment is to issue:
select distict country from table

And then i do the following for every country produced above:

select id from table where country='countryname' limit 1

I'm sure there is a quicker way to do this but I just cannot find it.
Hope somebody can help.

 

[FatherRon]

You can use SELECT DISTINCT ON instead of SELECT DISTINCT and specify the field to use it on.

SELECT DISTINCT ON (country) id, country
FROM mytable
WHERE country = 'UK';

The field that you use the DISTINCT ON modifier on must be listed in parentheses before your list of the fields.

 

[etones]

Thanks!
I didn't realize you could add the 'ON' to the DISTINCT statement.