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Fastest way to check if anything is in a MySQL table

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mysql fastest way to check for rows in table mysql is table empty

http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?101,50600,50853#msg-50853

Vail wrote:

> When it checks to see if the
> group exists, however, and the table is empty, it
> always returns an error, which disables the script
> that calls the function.

Why not doing a simple

select count(*) from groups

?

This tells you directly how many groups you have and will always return a valid value.

Mike

Mike Lischke, Software Engineer GUI
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com

Resolution

Comments

Faster way

SELECT 1 FROM table LIMIT 1;

This is imho the fastest way to find out, if the table is empty, no counting, just stop at first match - if it finds a line, it returns a constant of 1, otherwise, empty result.

Cool, thanks!

Didn't know you could just do "SELECT 1" like that. Very nice!

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