How can the issue of duplicate records in a database be efficiently handled using PHP and SQL, without relying on the LIKE operator?

Duplicate records in a database can be efficiently handled by using the GROUP BY clause in SQL to group similar records together and then selecting only one record from each group. This can help eliminate duplicates without relying on the LIKE operator, which can be inefficient for large datasets.

<?php
// Connect to the database
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=your_database', 'username', 'password');

// Query to select distinct records from the table without using the LIKE operator
$sql = "SELECT * FROM your_table GROUP BY column_name";

// Execute the query
$stmt = $pdo->query($sql);

// Fetch and display the results
while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
    echo $row['column_name'] . "\n";
}
?>