Question

I am trying to rewrite the following function in different way but it seems that I missed something and I do not get the intended functionality?
Could anyone suggest anything?
Thanks in advance.

Function 1

function user_exists($email) {  
  $email=mysql_real_escape_string($email);
  $query=mysql_query("SELECT COUNT (`user_id`) FROM `users` WHERE `email` = '$email'");
  return(mysql_result($query, 0) == 1) ? true : false;
}

Rewritten Function 1

function user_exists($email) {  
  $email=mysql_real_escape_string($email);
  $query=mysql_query("SELECT user_id FROM users WHERE email='$email'"); 
  $count=mysql_num_rows($query);    
  if ($query !=0) {
    return(true);   
  } else{
return(false)
}

Answer 1

function user_exists($email) 
{  
   $email = mysql_real_escape_string($email);
   $query = mysql_query("SELECT user_id FROM users WHERE email='$email'");  
   if (mysql_num_rows($query) > 0) 
   {
      return true; 
   }
   else
   {
      return false;
   }
}