php sort by letter

Is there any way with php you can view records in a mysql database table that begin with a given letter. i would like to be able to put an html dropdown box form with all the letters of the alphabet in and when someone selects a given letter then only records which begin with that letter will be displayed.

I need this as i don't want to be displaying 10,000 or so records and making someone scroll down because my list is sorted alphabetically and they want a record beginning with the letter v. Enableing then to just click on the letter v and just having the records beginning with v show up would be much more practical.

This could be done through the mysql query by using the LIKE statement, and wildcards

SELECT col FROM table WHERE col LIKE 'v%'

In MySQL, the % char is the wildcard..
Hope that suits your needs

thanks loads lindset, i'd tried it with WHERE col LIKE '%v%' which was basically selecting every record with a letter v in it. just removing the front % like your example has sorted it for me.
Thanks again.