How to use DISTINCT keyword for more than one column in single mysql query?

Question

I tried the below query but it not works.

Select DISTINCT firstname,lastname from users;

I need the DISTINCT records of first and last name.

This is the records:

first name | lastname | language_known
sakthi     | vel      | English
hari       | Prasath  | Chinese
Varun      | Kumar    | English

I need the above three results but need to remove the duplication of English which come two times in the result

What do you mean it does not work? Can you give example with data, result and your expected result? — piotrgajow, Jul 01 '16 at 12:40
`select distinct a,b,c from ... ` means distinct for the whole lot — Drew, Jul 01 '16 at 12:41
you can used group by clause `SELECT firstname,lastname FROM users GROUP BY firstname,lastname` — NikuNj Rathod, Jul 01 '16 at 12:42
You need to do a group by firstname, lastname, in some subquery/derived table and pontificate how you want to deal with TieBreaks: ie, which one to choose ... because you are going to lose data with this concept but that is what you seem to want. — Drew, Jul 01 '16 at 12:43
Possible duplicate of [MySQL SELECT DISTINCT multiple columns](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12188027/mysql-select-distinct-multiple-columns) — Mumpo, Jul 01 '16 at 12:47
How do you want to remove duplication of English, and still keep three results? What result do you want to get? — piotrgajow, Jul 01 '16 at 13:10

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 01 '16 at 13:01

Select DISTINCT firstname,lastname from users;

called on this data you have presented will first of all select first name and last name from the table, resulting in:

firstname | lastname 
sakthi    | vel      
hari      | Prasath  
Varun     | Kumar

And then will remove the duplicate rows, however there are no duplicates in this result set, so it will be returned as is:

firstname | lastname 
sakthi    | vel      
hari      | Prasath  
Varun     | Kumar

What result do you want to get?

1 Answers1