MySQL Cookbook

3.21 What to Do When LIMIT Requires the "Wrong" Sort Order

3.21.1 Problem

LIMIT usually works best in conjunction with an ORDER BY clause that sorts rows. But sometimes the sort order is the opposite of what you want for the final result.

3.21.2 Solution

Rewrite the query, or write a program that retrieves the rows and sorts them into the order you want.

3.21.3 Discussion

If you want the last four records of a result set, you can obtain them easily by sorting the set in reverse order and using LIMIT 4. For example, the following query returns the names and birth dates for the four people in the profile table who were born most recently:

mysql> SELECT name, birth FROM profile ORDER BY birth DESC LIMIT 4;
+---------+------------+
| name    | birth      |
+---------+------------+
| Shepard | 1975-09-02 |
| Carl    | 1973-11-02 |
| Fred    | 1970-04-13 |
| Mort    | 1969-09-30 |
+---------+------------+

But that requires sorting the birth values in descending order to place them at the head of the result set. What if you want them in ascending order instead? One way to solve this problem is to use two queries. First, use COUNT( ) to find out how many rows are in the table:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM profile;
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|       10 |
+----------+

Then, sort the values in ascending order and use the two-argument form of LIMIT to skip all but the last four records:

mysql> SELECT name, birth FROM profile ORDER BY birth LIMIT 6, 4;
+---------+------------+
| name    | birth      |
+---------+------------+
| Mort    | 1969-09-30 |
| Fred    | 1970-04-13 |
| Carl    | 1973-11-02 |
| Shepard | 1975-09-02 |
+---------+------------+

Single-query solutions to this problem may be available if you're issuing queries from within a program and can manipulate the query result. For example, if you fetch the values into a data structure, you can reverse the order of the values in the structure. Here is some Perl code that demonstrates this approach:

my $stmt = "SELECT name, birth FROM profile ORDER BY birth DESC LIMIT 4";
# fetch values into a data structure
my $ref = $dbh->selectall_arrayref ($stmt);
# reverse the order of the items in the structure
my @val = reverse (@{$ref});
# use $val[$i] to get a reference to row $i, then use
# $val[$i]->[0] and $val[$i]->[1] to access column values

Alternatively, you can simply iterate through the structure in reverse order:

my $stmt = "SELECT name, birth FROM profile ORDER BY birth DESC LIMIT 4";
# fetch values into a data structure
my $ref = $dbh->selectall_arrayref ($stmt);
# iterate through the structure in reverse order
my $row_count = @{$ref};
for (my $i = $row_count - 1; $i >= 0; $i--)
{
    # use $ref->[$i]->[0] and $ref->[$i]->[1] here...
}