On 06/11/06, Christian Hammers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 2006-11-06 Dotan Cohen wrote:
> I have a list of subjects, such as "Linux", "Open Source", and "the
> World Wide Web". The subjects are stored in MySQL and being retrieved
> via php. I currently organize them alphabetically with MySQL's "ORDER
> BY ASC" argument, however, if there is a preceding "the " or "a " then
> that is considered as part of the alphabetical order. Thus, all the
> subjects starting with "the " are grouped together, as are the
> subjects starting with "a ". How can I order by ascending, without
> taking the preceding "the " or "a " into account?

Make a second column that only contains
   ALTER TABLE table ADD cooked_subject;
   UPDATE table SET cooked_subject = ereg_replace('^(a|the) ', '', subject);
   (I don't know how the regular expression function was called exactly but you 
get the idea)

   SELECT  subject  FROM  table  ORDER BY  cooked_subject;

Of course you could also put the regular expression in the SELECT but that 
would be slower.

Would it really slow it down that much? I'll consider the
cooked_subject idea then, if noone has any other suggestions.

Thanks.

Dotan Cohen

http://www.lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/64/beatles.php
http://gmail-com.com/

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