WHERE - Order of conditions

[Brian W]

I know that LIKE conditions are slower than a strait equals conditions. In the case that I'm trying to find a particular user's information and I know their first name, I could do something like:

 

SELECT * FROM users WHERE name LIKE '$name%';

 

And if I knew their state too:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE state_id = '$state_id' AND name LIKE '$name%';

 

The Question is:

I would expect that because the state condition comes first, MySQL would only run the LIKE condition on the dataset that matched the state which should increase the speed. Am I correct?

[Maq]

I would expect that because the state condition comes first, MySQL would only run the LIKE condition on the dataset that matched the state which should increase the speed. Am I correct?

From what I understand, yes, you are correct.  To be sure, run it a few times with/out the WHERE clause and do a time comparison.