I thank you all. problem solved using two queries as TQ mentioned. On 6/6/06, tg-php@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <tg-php@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you have something like this: 123 Joe 124 Joe 125 Sue 126 John 127 Joe 128 Frank 129 Sue And you want to output something like: Joe 123, 124, 127 Sue 125, 129 John 126 Frank 128 But what you're getting is: Joe 123 Joe 124 ..etc You have two ways you can solve this: 1. Do two SQL queries: SELECT DISTINCT cus_name FROM customers while ($result) { // forgive the pseudo-code SELECT cus_id FROM customers WHERE cus_name = $result['cus_name'] while ($result2) { echo $output; } } Or.. 2. Collect data into an array and process 'distinctness' on output SELECT cus_name, cus_id FROM customers while ($result) { $cus_arr[$cus_name][] = $cus_id; } foreach ($cus_arr as $cus_name => $cus_idarr) { echo "$cus_name as ids:" . implode(", ", $cusidarr) . "<br>\n"; } There may be some tricky ways in SQL to get the data the way you want it, but ultimately it's not worth the bending over backwards for (do I remember right that you can do it with crosstab queries? don't even know if MySQL will do those properly). Easier just to do it with one of the methods above. Good luck! -TG = = = Original message = = = I want select distinct field and return value of that field, but I have problem which is: select distinct returns duplicate value. eg, I wan select distinct customer name and id from the customer table. one customer may have different cus_ids since cus_ids are auto increment and depend on the purchased items. so what I want is to select distinct customer name so that I can print customer name and customer id once. here is algorithm; select distinct cus_name, cus_id from customers order by cus_name asc While row is not empty do echo"<a href=\"page?cus=cus_id\">costomer name</a><br />"; ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php