RE: [PHP] counting number of records in a MySQL table; how do I get

[snip] > $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM tbl"); > $number_of_rows = mysql_num_rows($result); > > You don't have to do the count in the SQL, as John said earlier a SELECT > COUNT(*) FROM tbl will always return one row, even if the value of the row > is 0. Of course you could always test for that. > > CountingRows Solution #317 :^] That's a really ineffecient solution, though. COUNT() of optimized to return a quick result. Why would you select everything and use up all of those resources to just get a count of the rows? [/snip] I was thinking along the lines that there needed to be a query that returned some results that may also be displayed or used within the script. For instance, I use a paging script that queries for certain conditions and returns 40 records per page. I also display a line that says, "There are x records based on the criteria that you have selected.". x comes from mysql_num_rows. Now, if all I had to do was get the number of records I would use sql COUNT and test for the condition by seeing what number was returned by the COUNT. HTH! Jay