mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) AS num,author FROM comments GROUP BY author ORDER BY num DESC LIMIT 0,10;
+-----+----------+
| num | author |
+-----+----------+
| 148 | coder |
| 108 | pollo |
| 78 | r0sk |
| 74 | |
| 58 | Dalloway |
| 42 | krs |
| 42 | Aloriel |
| 37 | Felipe |
| 36 | QuasaR |
| 25 | Ruben |
+-----+----------+
10 rows in set (0.14 sec)
That works fine until I apply a CASE to avoid the blank in the author field:
mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) AS num,case author when '' then 'anon' end FROM comments GROUP BY author ORDER BY num DESC LIMIT 0,10;
+-----+-------------------------------------+
| num | case author when '' then 'anon' end |
+-----+-------------------------------------+
| 148 | NULL |
| 108 | NULL |
| 78 | NULL |
| 74 | anon |
| 58 | NULL |
| 42 | NULL |
| 42 | NULL |
| 37 | NULL |
| 36 | NULL |
| 25 | NULL |
+-----+-------------------------------------+
10 rows in set (0.15 sec)
As you can see, all the rest get corrupted