Description

Use the LIMIT clause to restrict the number of returned rows. When you use a single integer n with LIMIT, the first n rows will be returned. Use the ORDER BY clause to control which rows come first. You can also select a number of rows after an offset using either of the following:

LIMIT offset, row_count
LIMIT row_count OFFSET offset

When you provide an offset m with a limit n, the first m rows will be ignored, and the following n rows will be returned.

Executing an UPDATE with the LIMIT clause is not safe for replication.

Multi-Table Updates

GROUP_CONCAT

Examples

CREATE TABLE members (name VARCHAR(20));
INSERT INTO members VALUES('Jagdish'),('Kenny'),('Rokurou'),('Immaculada');

SELECT * FROM members;
+------------+
| name       |
+------------+
| Jagdish    |
| Kenny      |
| Rokurou    |
| Immaculada |
+------------+

Select the first two names (no ordering specified):

SELECT * FROM members LIMIT 2;
+---------+
| name    |
+---------+
| Jagdish |
| Kenny   |
+---------+

All the names in alphabetical order:

SELECT * FROM members ORDER BY name;
+------------+
| name       |
+------------+
| Immaculada |
| Jagdish    |
| Kenny      |
| Rokurou    |
+------------+

The first two names, ordered alphabetically:

SELECT * FROM members ORDER BY name LIMIT 2;
+------------+
| name       |
+------------+
| Immaculada |
| Jagdish    |
+------------+

The third name, ordered alphabetically (the first name would be offset zero, so the third is offset two):

SELECT * FROM members ORDER BY name LIMIT 2,1;
+-------+
| name  |
+-------+
| Kenny |
+-------+

From MariaDB 10.3.2, LIMIT can be used in a multi-table update:

CREATE TABLE warehouse (product_id INT, qty INT);
INSERT INTO warehouse VALUES (1,100),(2,100),(3,100),(4,100);

CREATE TABLE store (product_id INT, qty INT);
INSERT INTO store VALUES (1,5),(2,5),(3,5),(4,5);

UPDATE warehouse,store SET warehouse.qty = warehouse.qty-2, store.qty = store.qty+2 
  WHERE (warehouse.product_id = store.product_id AND store.product_id  >= 1) 
    ORDER BY store.product_id DESC LIMIT 2;

SELECT * FROM warehouse;
+------------+------+
| product_id | qty  |
+------------+------+
|          1 |  100 |
|          2 |  100 |
|          3 |   98 |
|          4 |   98 |
+------------+------+

SELECT * FROM store;
+------------+------+
| product_id | qty  |
+------------+------+
|          1 |    5 |
|          2 |    5 |
|          3 |    7 |
|          4 |    7 |
+------------+------+

From MariaDB 10.3.3, LIMIT can be used with GROUP_CONCAT, so, for example, given the following table:

CREATE TABLE d (dd DATE, cc INT);

INSERT INTO d VALUES ('2017-01-01',1);
INSERT INTO d VALUES ('2017-01-02',2);
INSERT INTO d VALUES ('2017-01-04',3);

the following query:

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT_WS(":",dd,cc) ORDER BY cc DESC),",",1) FROM d;
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| SUBSTRING_INDEX(GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT_WS(":",dd,cc) ORDER BY cc DESC),",",1) |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 2017-01-04:3                                                               |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

can be more simply rewritten as:

SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT_WS(":",dd,cc) ORDER BY cc DESC LIMIT 1) FROM d;
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT_WS(":",dd,cc) ORDER BY cc DESC LIMIT 1) |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| 2017-01-04:3                                                |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

See Also

• SELECT
• UPDATE
• DELETE
• Joins and Subqueries
• ORDER BY
• GROUP BY
• Common Table Expressions
• SELECT WITH ROLLUP
• SELECT INTO OUTFILE
• SELECT INTO DUMPFILE
• FOR UPDATE
• LOCK IN SHARE MODE
• Optimizer Hints