How to select distinct rows without using group by statement

Question

A B C
1 1 1 
1 1 1 
2 2 2 
2 2 2 
3 3 3 
3 3 3 
4 4 4 
4 4 4 
5 5 5 
5 5 5 
5 5 5 
6 6 6
6 6 6 

I am to output only the distinct rows without using the group by statement. I cannot use group by because it makes mysql hang. So it should return

1 1 1
2 2 2 
3 3 3 
4 4 4 
5 5 5 
6 6 6 

I am using DISTINCT in for an inner join.This does not work either:

SELECT DISTINCT * FROM TABLEA inner join TABLEB on TABLEA.A = TABLEB.A 

Answer 1

SELECT DISTINCT A,B,C FROM TABLE;

According to mysql documentation, DISTINCT specifies removal of duplicate rows from the result set (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/select.html)

I created a sample on jsfiddle and it works IMHO

create table tablea (A int,B int,C int);
create table tableb (A int);

INSERT INTO tablea VALUES (1,1,1),(1,1,1),(2,2,2),(2,2,2),(3,3,3),(3,3,3),(4,4,4),(4,4,4),(5,5,5),(5,5,5),(5,5,5),(6,6,6),(6,6,6);
INSERT INTO tableb VALUES (1),(1),(1),(1),(1);

SELECT DISTINCT tablea.A,tablea.B,tablea.C FROM tablea INNER JOIN tableb ON tablea.A=tableb.A;

feel free to experiment on this SQLFiddle.