is in table?

[hwttdz]

I'm looking for an easy query/bit of php code that can tell me if a certain value occurs in a table.

Right now the best idea I have is
$query = "select * from table1 where value=4";
$result = @($query);
if(@mysql_num_rows($result))
{
value occurs;
}
else
{
value does not occur;
}

Is there a better way to do this? Thanks.

[devinemke]

if all you care about is finding out if the value occurs then this would be a bit more efficient because it does not need to return the actual row data (just the count).

$result = mysql_query('SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table1 WHERE value = 4');
if (mysql_result($result, 0)) {echo 'value occurs';}
else {echo 'value does not occur';}

[hwttdz]

I don't understand the if call, if(mysqlresult($result,0)), what type of comparison is that making or what does the function do? Thanks.

[devinemke]

the query simply returns the count of records matching that criteria...so if the count is "0" then there are no records, anything other than "0" means there are records. PHP evaluates "0" as boolean FALSE and anything other integer as boolean TRUE.