Question

Let’s suppose we have a table with the fallowing values introduced in this particular order: 10, 11, 7, 5, 17, 147, 555.

If I were to try to find out where 11 for example was situated if I would have ordered the table ascending I would see that the index is 4.

However for large amounts of data I would not like to get the whole table and sort it in php beacuse that would be stupid.

What I want to know is if mysql can return the index of a value in an ordered query without querying all the values.

Thank you!

UPDATE #1

The query that I wanted looks like this (thanks to bluefeet):

SELECT rownum FROM (
SELECT col1, @rownum:=@rownum+1 AS rownum
FROM yourtable,
(SELECT @rownum:=0) table1
ORDER BY col1) table2
WHERE col1=11

and you can test it here http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/a21c8/12

Answer 1

MySQL doesn’t have a rownum per se but you can simulate it the following way:

SELECT col1, @rownum:=@rownum+1 AS rownum
FROM yourtable,
(SELECT @rownum:=0) r
ORDER BY col1

see SQL Fiddle with Demo

Using this you can determine the rownumber which might give you want you need.

If you then want a specific rownumber you can wrap this in a subquery:

select *
from 
(
  SELECT col1, @rownum:=@rownum+1 AS rownum
  FROM yourtable,
  (SELECT @rownum:=0) r
  ORDER BY col1
) x
where rownum = 6

see SQL Fiddle with demo