Update not updating

[jbutler]

Having a problem with a script that was once functional.

..'update table1 set content="$content" where id="$id"'...

1) If $content is very simple (i.e. "test"), then the update happens.

2) If $content is longer, i.e. 23k chars, it still works fine.

3) If $content is (apparently) too long, i.e. 50k chars, mysql returns no errors, but it also does not do the update.

Running from the command line in all three situations, #1=ok, #2=ok, #3=gets caught in some kind of loop, forever adding chars to the end of the display...until I have to force-quit the telnet application.

Can I append shorter bits of text (<25k chars) to the end of the existing cell content? Not by using update...same result (after reading the content and adding the next 25k chars to it, and trying to write it back to the table.)

Info:
column 'content' = longtext
mySQL version: 4.0.6 and 4.1.2 (same results)

Thoughts and solutions, anyone? Thank you!

[jbutler]

Note: using a "linked table" in MS Access, I am able to put lots and lots of text into the 'content' cell...far more than 50k chars.

So: mySQL is accepting the data, it's just invisibly choking on it when I try to use the update command.

So: it's not the size of the data (or the chars contained in the data) that's the problem...it's something to do with the update instruction itself.

I am using mysql_error() to show me errors, but receiving none. (I have seen errors in the not-too-distant past, just not with this particular problem.) Also using mysql_affected_rows() to see a quick result, even though it returns 0 most of the time.

Thanks, again!