Re: Is there anyway to do this? - Mailing list pgsql-sql

On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 12:45:56 -0400, Wei Weng <wweng@kencast.com> wrote:
> I have a table 
> 
>                Table "Users"
>   Column   |          Type          | Modifiers 
> -----------+------------------------+-----------
>  userid    | character varying(40)  | not null
>  username  | character varying(64)  | 
> 
> I want to get all the distinct first character of all usernames. And do
> it in a way that is the most portable to MS SQL server.
> 
> Is there anyway?

Looking through the documentation on string functions would be helpful.
An example solution is:
select distinct substring(username from 1 for 1) from users;