How to test if mysql_fetch_array returns no results ?

I am new to PHP so I am need someone to explain this problem to me. I am trying to read items from a table and store them into an array. My current function of choice to use is "mysql_fetch_array". The documentation says that it returns FALSE if there are no more rows returned, but yet when the query does not return a result set, It does not return anything. So the basic question is how do I test for a query that does not return for any results ? Here is some of my code below: $result = mysql_db_query ("GradAdmissions","select * from applicant where applicant_id = 17"); while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)) { echo "applicant_id: ".$row["applicant_id"]."<br>\n"; echo "member_id: ".$row["member_id"]."<br>\n"; } mysql_free_result ($result); Thanks in advance