Topics sounds confusing, right? Welcome to my world!

Here's an example. I have a database of phone numbers, such as this:

table: members
field: phone_number

values:
123-456-xxxx
123-234-xxxx
324-667-xxxx
555-767-xxxx
555-876-xxxx
661-661-xxxx
555-555-xxxx
324-324-xxxx

I need to know how many unique area codes there are, and how many
instances of that areas code

e.g.
123 (2)
324 (2)
767 (3)
661 (1)

How, in an SQL SELECT statement, can I do that? I'm not new to SQL, but
this one has me baffled!

Kevin

Here is the answer (SQL Server 2000) but should work on other RDBMSs

SELECT SUBSTRING(phone_number,1,3)
FROM members

I have assumed that your require the first characters in all cases.

Hope this helps


Duncan

Opps forgot to add the count

SELECT SUBSTRING(phone_number,1,3), COUNT(*)
FROM members
GROUP BY SUBSTRING(phone_number,1,3)

Many thanks, undercups. I had to use SUBSTR rather than SUBSTRING, but
the rest worked perfectly.