I use the null= ... it keeps you from having a redundant loop.
<?php
mysql_connect("localhost", "mysql_user", "mysql_password") or
die("could not connect");
mysql_select_db("mydb");
$result = mysql_query("SELECT id, name FROM mytable");
while (NULL !=($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC))) {
printf ("ID: %s Name: %s", $row["id"], $row["name"]);
}
mysql_free_result($result);
?>