is there a more efficient way to do this?

[wil831]

can i use only one $result line instead of two to select the country from the userlist?
cid is the country ID assigned to each user and the country names are in the country_list table.
what i wanna know is, can i get to the line
echo "Country: $country";
with less than 5 lines i currently have..

$result = mysql_query("SELECT cid FROM userlist WHERE uid='$uid'", $dbi); 
list($cid) = mysql_fetch_row($result, $dbi);
$result = mysql_query("SELECT country FROM country_list WHERE cid='$cid'", $dbi);  

list($country) = mysql_fetch_row($result, $dbi);
echo "Country: $country";

[sarahk]

for starters crunching your code into fewer lines might lead to less code but it can mean more maintenance.

that said, you have two queries where you only need one.

$sql = "SELECT country_list.country from country_list, userlist "
. "WHERE userlist.uid='$uid' "
. "and userlist.cid = country_list.cid";
$result = mysql_query( $sql, $dbi);