[snip] my reasoning for needing the users number in a database is this... i am going to be doing a lottery type thing where i grab a random number between 1 and the result of mysql_num_rows($result)... that is the reason the gaps matter. the while loop didn't work for me so if anyone could help me out on how to get this number i would aprreaciate it. thank you in advance. [/snip] The one thing that no one has mentioned is that relational databases will returns rows in whatever order they please if no ORDER BY is specified. Generally, due to query caching, rows without an order by will be returned in the same order nearly every time. The better solution here is selecting the lowest ID and the highest ID and selecting a random number between the two, checking for its existence, and doing the operation again until it comes up with a valid ID. This way it matters not what ID's exist in what order and you will always get a valid ID to award the lottery to. Or you could do it all in the query itself, if you wanted to be a true RDBMS master. SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1 See...no ID's or artificial ordering required. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
