table id field int(6) what does this mean?

ade234uk

I have never really understood what the int(6) means. I know that is an integer, but does int(6) means I can have a table with a maximum 999999 records in it or has it got something to do with memory.

What happens after 999999 does the database revert back to 0

What about mediumint and bigint? If I wanted a database to have 999999999999 records would I need to use a mediumint(12)

NogDog

From http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/numeric-types.html:

Another extension is supported by MySQL for optionally specifying the display width of an integer value in parentheses following the base keyword for the type (for example, INT(4)). This optional display width specification is used to left-pad the display of values having a width less than the width specified for the column.

The display width does not constrain the range of values that can be stored in the column, nor the number of digits that are displayed for values having a width exceeding that specified for the column.

So a field of type INT has a max value of 2,147,483,647 while a field of type INT UNSIGNED has a max value of 4,294,967,295, regardless of the display width value.