Chapter 6. Sorting Query Results
Introduction
This chapter covers sorting, an
operation that is extremely important for controlling how MySQL
displays results from SELECT
statements. Sorting
is performed by adding an ORDER
BY
clause to a query. Without such a clause, MySQL
is free to return rows in any order, so sorting helps bring order to
disorder and make query results easier to examine and understand.
(Sorting also is performed implicitly when you use a
GROUP
BY
clause, as discussed
in Recipe 7.14.)
One of the tables used for quite a few examples in this chapter is
driver_log
, a table that contains columns for
recording daily mileage logs for a set of truck drivers:
mysql> SELECT * FROM driver_log;
+--------+-------+------------+-------+
| rec_id | name | trav_date | miles |
+--------+-------+------------+-------+
| 1 | Ben | 2001-11-30 | 152 |
| 2 | Suzi | 2001-11-29 | 391 |
| 3 | Henry | 2001-11-29 | 300 |
| 4 | Henry | 2001-11-27 | 96 |
| 5 | Ben | 2001-11-29 | 131 |
| 6 | Henry | 2001-11-26 | 115 |
| 7 | Suzi | 2001-12-02 | 502 |
| 8 | Henry | 2001-12-01 | 197 |
| 9 | Ben | 2001-12-02 | 79 |
| 10 | Henry | 2001-11-30 | 203 |
+--------+-------+------------+-------+
Many other examples use the mail
table (first seen
in earlier chapters):
mysql> SELECT * FROM mail;
+---------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | t | srcuser | srchost | dstuser | dsthost | size | +---------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | 2001-05-11 ...
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