Comments on: Finding the smallest or largest value across multiple columns in MySQL

By: Dieter Köhler

Dieter Köhler — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:24:24 +0000

The code can be improved to take care for the case when all dates are NULL:

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SELECT id, date1, date2, date3, date4,
nullif(
least(
ifnull(date1, '9999-99-99'),
ifnull(date2, '9999-99-99'),
ifnull(date3, '9999-99-99'),
ifnull(date4, '9999-99-99')
),
'9999-99-99') AS first_date
FROM my_db.my_table
GROUP BY id;

By: Charan Singh

Charan Singh — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:15:07 +0000

Hello !
I’m trying to compare 5 columns for the highest and lowest values in these with some cells/rows as null value; Following above example when I am trying to run the query it doesn’t bring least value in the “Resultvalue” column, it brings NULL cell/row with no Value in these, where ever there is null in the col1 to col5 and only brings the least correct value results if no col is null/ where null doesnt get substituted with 999 value as per this query. Please guide

Use Db;
Create table Test As
SELECT *,
least(ifnull(col1,’999′),
ifnull(col2, ’999′),
ifnull(col3, ’999′),
ifnull(col4, ’999′),
ifnull(col5, ’999′)
) AS Resultvalue,
From table Db.Test
Group by Id;

By: Atea

Atea — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:12:21 +0000

Thanks! I was looking for hours for this!

My solution for two columns with decimals:

SELECT LEAST(price_month_regular, ifnull(price_month_action, 9999)) AS least FROM `cp_contracts` ORDER BY least

By: Don McArthur

Don McArthur — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:34:00 +0000

Most implementations of SQL don’t allow the mixing of grouped and ungrouped columns in the SELECT clause. MySQL does, but the row selected for display from the ungrouped column is essentially randomly chosen. The groupwise max solution is a means of overcoming this.

http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/groupwise-max/