Simple way of building table by column

Anon

I am trying to find a way to build a table with the results running down a column at a time... eg (let's hope this survives the post

1 4
2 5
3 6

1 2
3 4
5 6

I have thought of a few overly complicated ways of doing this, but I'd like something efficient if anything exists.

Any thoughts??

Anon

If you know how many rows and columns you need, why not do it like this:

pseudo code, I am lazy today

for ($t = 1 to number_of_rows)
{
insert (
$t,
$t+(1number_of_rows),
$t+(2number_of_rows),
$t+(3*number_of_rows)
)
};

Or, fill one column with numbers, and update the second column to be the first column + number_of_rows

update my_table set second_column=first_column+number_of_rows;

you could repeat that for the third column;

update my_table set third_column=second_column+number_of_rows;

I'm not sure if you could stick those updates all together in one statement though... you'd have to try that out.

Anon

Sorry, I guess that was unclear. This is an HTML output that is the result from a query that I am trying to build this table. Because of the way that HTML tables work it is significantly easier to have sequential output in table cells left to right rather than top down. 1 result per cell. So it's gotta know how many results, then figure out how many rows that will be, then populate top down, start at the top next column...etc.

Anon

Ok, that clears things up a bit.

I don't think there is a very easy way of doing that, it will be a little messy.
The method you describe sounds like the easiest way, work out the dimensions of the table, and populate accordingly.
But, you don't populate top-down, then next column etc.
You output complete rows at a time

in pseudo code:

$num_cols = x;
$num_rows = x;

for $t= 0 to $num_cols
{
print "<TR>";
for $u = 0 to $num_rows
print "<td>$data[$t+($u*$num_rows)]</td>";
};
print "</tr>";
};