Alphabet loop and mysql queries

[CrustyDOD]

Hey!

 

I have a question that is a bit more related to mysql then PHP so i hope i didn't miss the board too much.

 

1st Question:

I have an array of english alphabet and a foreach loop that goes over array 1 by 1.

Inside loop i have mysql query that searches for records (20 records per letter) that start with n letter

 

... LIKE 'A%' ....

 

The question is how on earth do i get records that DO NOT start with alphabet letter? Basically before A output is done i would like to get 20 records that start with 0-9, _, -, etc ANYTHING but those 26 alphabet letters.

 

Hope its clear

 

2nd question, doing the above method it means that i will have to execute 26 + 1 non-alphabet mysql queries (each query gets 20 records) (since they are inside loop). Is there any other way to do this without so many queries?

[marklarah]

"...WHERE `letter` != 'X'..."

 

also use $i++; inside your loop somewhere to automate the ID or whatever.

 

[CrustyDOD]

Yeah but that means that query will look like this:

 

WHERE field NOT LIKE 'a%'

AND field NOT LIKE 'b%'

AND field NOT LIKE 'c%'

..all the way down to..

AND field NOT LIKE 'z%'

 

That's a bit overkill isn't it?