RE: [PHP] How do i retrieve the records that are NOT linked?

> if i understand you correctly, perhaps this: > > select * from categories a,category_user_rights b where a.name!=b.username; > > jack When i do something like that I get loads of duplicate records including the ones that should be there! so if i do a group the result just looks like i've selected everything... here's my query for getting all the (sub)categories that DO have an entry in "category_user_rights"... Somehow i need to reverse it to pull out everything but what it's returning at the moment! :o( $sql = "SELECT categories.ID, categories.title, categories.code "; $sql .= "FROM categories, category_user_rights "; $sql .= "WHERE categories.parentcat_INC = $cat "; $sql .= "AND categories.ID = category_user_rights.category_id "; $sql .= "AND category_user_rights.username = '$username'"; $result = mysql_query($sql); Original message: "categories" contains: ID, parent_ID, name "users" contains: username, password, name, etc.... "category_user_rights" contains: username, category_ID How do I pull everything out of "categories" that a given user DOES NOT have rights to? ie. every record from "categories" that does not have a record in "category_user_rights" linking it to a username such as "fred" Any help on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! Simon Kimber -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net