Purging duplicates from MySQL?

[erikcw]

Hi all,

I'm trying to purge duplicate records from my MySQL database. Are there any built in MySQL or php functions that can do this? If not, what is the best way to tackle the problem? It is a pretty large table (100,000+ records...)

Thanks!
Erik

[eelixduppy]

You could try something like this:

$sql = "select count(col1) as ccols,col1,col2 from table_1";
$result = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
if($row['ccols'] > 1) {
$newsql = "delete from table_1 where col1 = $row['col1'] and col2 = $row['col2] limit
$row['ccols']-1";
mysql_query($newsql);
}
}

You could try this; I haven't, but i hope it helps. Good luck!

eelix