sql distinct values

Question

I have city database with country,state,city,postalcode,areacode. The city is not distinct ..for eg one city is repeated for multiple postalcode. I just want the list of distinct city and the first postal code and areacode... if is use distinct it would let me select distinct country state city ...i cannot get other details like areacode...and one of the correct postal code...should i have to write a function to achieve this...

THnks Coool

Answer 1

The following gets you a distinct list of cities and their first postal code (i.e.-the smallest one), which is what the min does. The group by clause specifies that you want the min of postalcode for each city.

select 
    city,
    min(postalcode) as zip
from
    places
group by
    city