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3.3.4.4 Sorting Rows »
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3.3.4.3. Selecting Particular Columns

If you do not want to see entire rows from your table, just name the columns in which you are interested, separated by commas. For example, if you want to know when your animals were born, select the name and birth columns: 

mysql> SELECT name, birth FROM pet;
+----------+------------+
| name     | birth      |
+----------+------------+
| Fluffy   | 1993-02-04 |
| Claws    | 1994-03-17 |
| Buffy    | 1989-05-13 |
| Fang     | 1990-08-27 |
| Bowser   | 1989-08-31 |
| Chirpy   | 1998-09-11 |
| Whistler | 1997-12-09 |
| Slim     | 1996-04-29 |
| Puffball | 1999-03-30 |
+----------+------------+

To find out who owns pets, use this query: 

mysql> SELECT owner FROM pet;
+--------+
| owner  |
+--------+
| Harold |
| Gwen   |
| Harold |
| Benny  |
| Diane  |
| Gwen   |
| Gwen   |
| Benny  |
| Diane  |
+--------+

Notice that the query simply retrieves the owner column from each record, and some of them appear more than once. To minimize the output, retrieve each unique output record just once by adding the keyword DISTINCT: 

mysql> SELECT DISTINCT owner FROM pet;
+--------+
| owner  |
+--------+
| Benny  |
| Diane  |
| Gwen   |
| Harold |
+--------+

You can use a WHERE clause to combine row selection with column selection. For example, to get birth dates for dogs and cats only, use this query: 

mysql> SELECT name, species, birth FROM pet
    -> WHERE species = 'dog' OR species = 'cat';
+--------+---------+------------+
| name   | species | birth      |
+--------+---------+------------+
| Fluffy | cat     | 1993-02-04 |
| Claws  | cat     | 1994-03-17 |
| Buffy  | dog     | 1989-05-13 |
| Fang   | dog     | 1990-08-27 |
| Bowser | dog     | 1989-08-31 |
+--------+---------+------------+

User Comments

Posted by Tanvir Alam (Mitul) Dhaka on October 1 2005 6:15am[Delete] [Edit]

select name sex from pet;
if u miss the ' , ' between name and sex it won't generate error.It will show only sex column.

Posted by Mukhtar Elhadi on October 1 2005 12:38pm[Delete] [Edit]

it is just an alias for name column not sex column

Posted by Alex Grim on December 13 2006 5:30am[Delete] [Edit]

It's like saying:
select cats AS 'dogs' from pets;

It'd return a table something like:

+--------+
|  dogs  |
|--------|
| kitty  |
| meow   |
| claws  |
+--------+

Posted by Linh Hoang on February 11 2007 8:44pm[Delete] [Edit]

To clarify the comma issue, the token or word after the column's name is a label for the column. Here is exactly what it is:

mysql> SELECT name, species TYPE FROM pet WHERE species = 'dog' OR species = 'cat';

+--------+------+
| name   | TYPE |
+--------+------+
| Fluffy | cat  | 
| Claws  | cat  | 
| Buffy  | dog  | 
| Fang   | dog  | 
| Bowser | dog  | 
+--------+------+

It is more prefered to specify it clearly like this:

SELECT name, species as 'TYPE' FROM pet WHERE species = 'dog' OR species = 'cat';

which would give the same output.

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