how to count rows by first letter?

Question

a noob question here!

I wrote this query, but the \"group by\" is very stupid... so, how can I correct this?

SELECT
    COUNT(*) AS total,
    \'x\'         


        

Answer 1

This should perform as well as any other option -

SELECT
    LEFT(name, 1) AS first_letter,
    COUNT(*) AS total
FROM contents
GROUP BY first_letter

If you want to run this query for a single letter at a time you can add the WHERE clause and drop the GROUP BY -

SELECT COUNT(*) AS total
FROM contents
WHERE name LIKE 'a%'