Question

I’m mostly posting this question as a resource for others as I couldn’t find anything explicitly answering it online: Is the LIMIT x,y syntax performatively equivalent to OFFSET x, LIMIT y?

According to official MySQL docs:

For compatibility with PostgreSQL, MySQL also supports the LIMIT row_count OFFSET offset syntax.

This implies to me that they are absolutely equivalent.

But I can’t find any official doc saying so explicitly. So I’m 99% sure there aren’t any low level differences, but would love that official stamp of approval and peace of mind. Thanks.

Answer 1

I actually wasn’t sure, and I can’t find any documentation either, but I tested it and it seems to work just fine. Results:

andrew@uf ~ $ mysql --version
mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.66, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.1
...

mysql (sandbox) > SELECT * FROM db1.t1 LIMIT 1, 2;
+-------+------------+-----------------------------+
| grpID | grpCode    | grpDesc                     |
+-------+------------+-----------------------------+
|     2 | INTL_LEADS | International leads         |
|     3 | CPE_LEADS  | CPE-specific Domestic leads |
+-------+------------+-----------------------------+

mysql (sandbox) > SELECT * FROM db1.t1 LIMIT 2 OFFSET 1;
+-------+------------+-----------------------------+
| grpID | grpCode    | grpDesc                     |
+-------+------------+-----------------------------+
|     2 | INTL_LEADS | International leads         |
|     3 | CPE_LEADS  | CPE-specific Domestic leads |
+-------+------------+-----------------------------+

So yeah. I did more testing than this, but I don’t want to post all of it. That’s pretty handy to know as that syntax makes more sense to me.