Question

I recently ran across some code which the person did the first one. Would like some thoughts on if the top one is better or why a person would write it that way? Any positive reasons over the bottom way.

$result = mysql_query($query)or die("Obtaining location data failed!");
for ($i = mysql_num_rows($result) - 1; $i >=0; $i--)
{
  if (!mysql_data_seek($result, $i))
  {
    echo "Cannot seek to row $i\n";
    continue;
  }
  if(!($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)))
    continue;
  echo $row->locationname;
}
mysql_free_result($result);

vs

$result = mysql_query($query) or die("Obtaining location data failed!");
while($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)){
  echo $row->locationname;
  unset($row);
}
mysql_free_result($result);

Answer 1

It looks like the top code is iterating through the mysql result backwards, where the first one is going through it forwards.

The second code example looks cleaner, and there is probably a way to adjust the query to get the results in reverse order in the first place, instead of the somewhat convoluted way the top loop was performed.