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Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 12:13:33 -0500
From: Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to>
To: Wei Weng <wweng@kencast.com>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Is there anyway to do this?
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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;