Better way to do this query?

Guest · **Points:**

I have a table that contains a lot of records of people's names. I would like to break up the viewing by last name.

ie: Click here to view by last name - A-D / E-H / I-M .....

and so on.

The MySQL query I came up that gives me the results I needs seems very bulky and I was wondering if anyone else, perhaps, saw a better way to do this:

Code:

SELECT * FROM names WHERE last LIKE 'A%' OR last LIKE 'B%' OR last LIKE 'C%' OR last LIKE 'D%' ORDER BY last ASC

Thanks!

Guest · **Points:**

Well, it's working fine - like I intended, but if I'm still open to know if there is a more compact / efficient way to do a query like this.

Guest · **Points:**

How about this:

Code:

SELECT * FROM names WHERE last REGEXP BINARY '^[A-D]' ORDER BY last ASC

Less bulky, but regex is generally less efficient for simple searches.

Or this should work ... with no regex ...

Code:

SELECT * FROM names WHERE SUBSTRING(last,1,1) in ('A','B','C','D')  ORDER BY last ASC

Time to run a PHP/MySQL benchmark

Guest · **Points:**

Excellent suggestions. Thanks.

Better way to do this query?

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