How is a COUNT stored?

Anon

I'm doing this to figure out the number of records in a table in MySQL:
$count_ans=mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(*) AS count FROM ans",$link_id);
$anstable== mysql_fetch_array($count_ans);
$record_count=$anstable[count];
echo "The number of records counted is ".$anstable[count];

I'm not getting the number to display. My quess is that the query is being stored under another name or possible not being stored at all.

What I need help figuring out is how to store the record count as a variable and display it on the screen.

Thanks,
Bryan

Anon

for starters..

$anstable== mysql_fetch_array($count_ans);

shoudl be..

$anstable = mysql_fetch_array($count_ans);

Anon

i think that count (*) is only used in mysql and is therefor not something you can return in php. i've tried but it doesn't seem to work and i gave up quickly. basically i don't think you can return it in an array.

another way of doing it is use:

$query = "SELECT balh FROM blah where blah";
$result = mysql_db_query("database", $query);
$num = mysql_num_rows($result);

<?echo $num;?>

if anyone knows how to use count i would like to know as well b/c you don't have to actual select from the db.

Anon

This should work:

$query = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tablename";
$result = mysql_query( $query );
$count = mysql_result( $result, 0, 0 );
echo $count;

If you do a SELECT blah AS blah2 then this should work:

$query = "SELECT COUNT(*) AS num FROM tablename";
$result = mysql_query( $query );
$row = mysql_fetch_array( $result );
echo $row["num"];

Trying to access the row element without putting the inde string in "" should be an error. If not, it's just php being overly gracious. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I don't have access to php right now.