[SOLVED] Intro Outro ORDER

[jaymc]

Lets say I have a table, in that table there is a field where a number can be between 0-100,000

 

I want to pull out all records closest to a number I specify

 

For instance if the number I specify is 800, it should return

 

799, 801, 798, 802, 797, 803

 

NOT 801, 802, 803 or vice versa which is what I would get using a standard order.

 

I cant use BETWEEN or < > because the closest number to a number I specify maybe 350 digits away, its dynamic

 

Just think of it as a program which calculates the 10 closest people to someone standing directly in the middle of a circle. Each time you load the script the position of the people are different, hence cant use BETWEEN etc

 

Im actually using this to calculate the people closest to a postcode based on long and lat, but the circle example will surfice!

 

Any ideas on the best way to do this in pure MYSQL

[fenway]

Unless you know the distribution in advance, you can't do this very easily -- you can kludge it, but it's not great.

 

And lat/long is a completely different issue.

[jaymc]

Kludge it?

 

Ok lets say I did know the distribution, so I use BETWEEN

 

How can I get it to order it by INTRO/OUTRO as in closest to the number specified

[fenway]

Well, if you know how many are in between, then you can multiply by the gap (plus an extra 50% fudge factor), and then "mark" the middle row, and work backwards.