Question

Wel all know that we have to use something like mysql_fetch_assoc to a mysql query to get an associative array and then use $row[‘foo’] and $row[‘bar’] to get every value.

Is there a way to optimize the query to get a simple string if we want to return a single column from a single row so that the result will be a simple var and not an associative array?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Use mysql_result funciton

$res = mysql_query(..);
$str = mysql_result($res, 0, 0);

Here $str contains the first column of first row.

Also keep in mind that mysql_result will move the internal result pointer to point the next row.