Question

What I am trying to do is query the database and have it return the orders. This integer was mistakenly inserted as negative. So I would like to take the abs() of it and reinsert it as positive. I don’t think MySQL can do this but this is how I have written the query. I am searching for alternate methods. (If this is not possible I will simply use PHP). Thank you.

Edited with: This should update more then one row.

UPDATE `users` SET `orders` = (SELECT abs(orders)
FROM `users` WHERE count1 = 5) WHERE count1 = 5;

Answer 1

Unfortunately MySQL has this stupid limitation that a the table being updated may not appear in a sub-select of the same statement.

But I don’t see why you would need the sub-select at all:

UPDATE users 
    SET orders = abs(orders)
WHERE count1 = 5;

should do what you want.

Or if you want to turn all negative values into positive ones:

UPDATE users 
    SET orders = abs(orders)
WHERE orders < 0;