Weird update problem..

This is really weird... i have tried the same exact code in phpmyadmin and it works like a charm, but when i run the script... no errors then i go to phpmyadmin and nothing has changed :( this is the code: ============================================================================ $how_many_to_update=count($cardno_array); // update the cards status to sent for($i=0;$i<$how_many_to_update;$i++) { $update_sql="update greetings set is_sent=1 where cardno='".$cardno_array[$i]."' and rand_str='".$rand_str_array[$i]."' LIMIT 1"; $result = mysql_query($sql_1); $num_rows1 = mysql_num_rows($result); if(!$result || $num_rows1==0){echo "Error: unable to update sent greetings";exit;} echo "updating<br>$update_sql<br>"; } ========================================================================= In the second last line you can see i have an echo statement... the SQL thats outputted from there works perfectly in phpmyadmin... any idea whats wrong? Slightly OT, any better way to run the multiple updates needed above than instead of running the update query in a loop? I searched google and the best i could find was the IN() for mySql... but that does not take 2 parameters (eg: cardno and rand_str) it would work just on card_no like this in('14','34') Thanks! R