Question

The following function is designed to check whether this row in this tables exists. I know that it does not yet whether I $row or !$row the if function it does not do anything.

function four_zero_four($name){
    $four_zero_four = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM pages WHERE name = '$name'"); 

    while($row = mysql_fetch_array($four_zero_four)) { 
      echo 'no'; die(); 
    }
};

$name is the name field from the row and is working correctly in other functions.

Answer 1

Another way to check whether a row exists is by using the mysql_result function in conjunction with the COUNT function as such:

$query = mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(1) FROM `table` WHERE `field` = 'something'");
$result = mysql_result($query, 0);

When you now print out the $result variable, you will see the amount of rows that are actually being returned by the query. This is generally faster than using mysql_num_rows.