Sorting a MySQL query with ORDER BY or with PHP sort functions

Question

I have a query that I want to sort alphabetically, but the trick is that I want the sorting to treat two columns equally. For instance, if the first row of first_col<

Answer 1

As they say above, UNION ALL is your friend, and, of course, if you have only one table, you can always do this:

(SELECT field1 AS name FROM TABLE1) 
UNION ALL 
(SELECT field2 AS name FROM TABLE1) 
ORDER BY name DESC

So, you are asking for two diferent rows in the same table, and ordering it as it was one.