Count from a table, but stop counting at a certain number

Question

Is there a way in MySQL to COUNT(*) from a table where if the number is greater than x, it will stop counting there? Basically, I only want to know

Answer 1

I can't think of anything. It looks to me like what you're doing exactly fulfils the purpose, and SQL certainly doesn't seem to go out of its way to make it easy for you to do this more succinctly.

Consider this: What you're trying to do doesn't make sense in a strict context of set arithmetic. Mathematically, the answer is to count everything and then take the MIN() with 100, which is what you're (pragmatically and with good reason) trying to avoid.

Answer 2

This works:

select count(*) from ( select * from  stockinfo s limit 100 ) s

but was not any faster (that I could tell) from just:

select count(*) from stockinfo

which returned 5170965.

Answer 3

SELECT * FROM WhateverTable WHERE WhateverCriteria
LIMIT 100, 1

LIMIT 100, 1 returns 101th record, if there is one, or no record otherwise. You might be able to use the above query as a sub-query in EXIST clauses, if that helps.