Jay Blanchard wrote: > [snip] > In what way would this simplify or ease my pain? > The difficulty, it seems to me, is not in retrieving the rows, but > rather how to pass the row data to the variables. And since the number > of rows is variable, I believe that the only way to assign the variables > is by use of a loop? I think I'm beating my head against the wall for > nothing... :-( > [/snip] > > You asked for easier. In this way the data is assigned to a usable > variable right out of the gate and that is an array variable. You can > actually use it with either mysql_fetch_array or mysql_fetch_row. > > Here is your query; > > $sql = "SELECT first_name, last_name, book_author.ordinal > FROM author, book_author > WHERE book_author.bookID = $idIN && book_author.authID = author.id > ORDER BY ordinal"; > > You need not declare another array, but do it this way instead; > > if ($results = mysql_query($sql, $db)) { > while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($results, MYSQL_ASSOC) ) { > echo $row['first_name']; > echo $row['last_name']; > Then I have to add some loopy thing to assign the values to the $variables... a real pita since my variable do not lend themselves too well to linear alterations ($varIn, $var2IN, $var3IN... etc... so $i=0 and $i++ arren't going to be too cooperative here... I guess I'd have to change that to $var1IN... and then figure out how to do $var.$i.IN ... I already tried, but don't seem to have it right > ....etcetera..... > } > } > > The lazy part I will agree with :) > Well, I shouldn't say it, but laziness is a characteristic of "intelligence": why do more than you have to when you can be doing something else. Actually, I am anything but lazy, I spend innumerable hours trying to understand what all this coding is about... searching the web and rummaging (and I do mean "rummaging") in all the lists and posts ... but just going through 20 or 30 listings out of more than 20,000 is already taxing... much easier to ask on the list... if someone can understand my fuzzy questions, they may find the grace and generosity to take pity on the ignoramus... ;-) And I enjoy the ribbing and the humour ... it's a really very nice list! -- Hervé Kempf: "Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme." ------------------------------------------------------------- Phil Jourdan --- pj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php