DISTINCT troubles

[slighltywhacked]

Hi all.......
first I will start with the layout of the database concerningt his question

users(uid, name, phone, address, email, website, premium, writeup, coupon)

category(cid, value)

lookup(uid, cid) 

Now when I preform a search, it sometimes gets messed up when there a user belongs to multiple categories, indicated by the lookup table which links the two other tables together

for example if lookup looked like....

|uid | cid|
| 1   || 43   |
| 1   || 26   |
| 1   || 11   |

it would display the results 3 times... I know I need to use distinct, but I cant realy remember how to use it to well....this is hte statement I came up with

$result =mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT lookup.uid, lookup.cid, users.name, users.uid, users.phone, users.address, users.email, users.website, users.premium, users.writeup, users.coupon, category.* FROM users, lookup, category WHERE  (((category.cid = lookup.cid) AND (lookup.uid = users.uid)) AND ((users.name LIKE '%$keyword%') or (category.value LIKE '%$keyword%'))) ORDER BY premium DESC, name ASC LIMIT $offset, $x") 

and its not working.... it still brings up all of hte results

[freakysid]

Well the problem is that each row in your result set is going to be unique - by definition. This is because, as you know each row in the lookup table is, of course, going unique.

<<edited>>
Sorry I had an SQL here that was bad code. I will repost if I can think of the solution

[MattR]

DISTINCT will select a distinct tuple NOT a distinct column.

[sylow]

use only user fields in select part and keep distinct. It sounds you dont need category information or u need only one of them?

[slighltywhacked]

"category.value LIKE '%$keyword%'"
yes, i do need the category in there

[sylow]

you do not use that in SELECT part
that is used in WHERE part