title: Returning the DISTINCT first character of a field (MySQL)
body: <p>I would like to produce a character list of all of the first letters of column in my database. The SQL below illistrats what I would like to return.</p>
  
  <pre>
  SELECT DISTINCT first_character(name) FROM mydatabase
  </pre>
  
  <p>Is there a way to do this in MySQL?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong>
  What is the advantage of using SUBSTRING over LEFT and vice versa?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong>
  Currently there are about 1700 records in the table and growing.</p>