As the documentation says:
The LIMIT
clause can be used to constrain the number of rows returned by the SELECT
statement. LIMIT
takes one or two numeric arguments, which must both be nonnegative integer constants (except when using prepared statements).
With two arguments, the first argument specifies the offset of the first row to return, and the second specifies the maximum number of rows to return. The offset of the initial row is 0 (not 1)
.
The LIMIT
clause is used in the SELECT
statement to constrain the number of rows in a result set. The LIMIT
clause accepts one or two arguments. The values of both arguments must be zero or positive integer constants.
The following illustrates the LIMIT
clause syntax with 2 arguments:
SELECT * FROM tbl
LIMIT offset, count;
Let’s see what the offset and count mean in the LIMIT clause:
- The
offset
specifies the offset of the first row to return. The offset of the first row is 0, not 1.
- The
count
specifies maximum number of rows to return.
When you use LIMIT
with one argument, this argument will be used to specifies the maximum number of rows to return from the beginning of the result set.
SELECT * FROM tbl
LIMIT count;
The query above is equivalent to the following query with the LIMIT
clause that accepts two arguments:
SELECT * FROM tbl
LIMIT 0, count;
The LIMIT
clause often used with ORDER BY
clause. First, you use the ORDER BY
clause to sort the result set based on a certain criteria, and then you use LIMIT
clause to find lowest or highest values.
LIMIT 1 OFFSET 0
. But you should really includeORDER BY
in any query that hasLIMIT
, unless there is a specific reason not to.