fenway

And you can't use an expression as a default.

My advice pertained to SELECT queries only.

Blank screen = PHP error == wrong forum.

This is basically a variant on counting rows based a given column value -- you'll have to use user variables.

I don't see why you need it in "a single row, while loop" -- who cares? Besides, it's easier to write as two subqueries, though there is a fancy way to get this in a single query.

Nope -- add a "modified" column, and use magical timestamp or insert it yourself (the latter is preferable).

Actually, not solved -- you're storing dates as VARCHAR -- not DATE -- use a proper format.

You're not escaping special characters.

Without the parens, that's valid syntax... but it's not very efficient.

Besides, NULL in an auto-increment field will just insert the next number in sequence anyway. And why would you duplicate information across columns????

That's not technically correct -- use LIMIT 0, and it most cases, nothing will happen, but the parser will still have to validate the query.

Not "all" of the info -- just the non-matching records. After all, you did say LEFT JOIN.

Huh?

Still don't see why there can't be a single pre-existing meeting table.

What kind of words?

Sorry, I don't follow.

You're talking about storing hierarchical data -- not trivial, many tutorials around, including on the stickyl

Assuming you have an index on your timestamp column, you're at the limit.

Why not do this in a single SQL statement?

Yes... and I believe I alluded to this earlier. Simply run this query as a derived table, and use MAX().

Huh?

I can't follow that.

First, you get a resultset back from mysql_query() -- that's a hash, not a scalar. Second, why not use a join?

UNION then COUNT(*)?

I think thorpe meant: SELECT ID, Location FROM tbl ORDER BY FIELD(Location, 'New York'); But careful if there are non-matching value.