Mysql preview output before processing?

is there a way to preview a mysql queries result开发者_运维知识库s before processing?

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If you're asking whether it's possible to execute MySQL commands, look at the results and decide whether you actually want these changes, look at transactions.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/commit.html

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I've never done it but my guess would be you could create a temporary table from the table in question and run the query on that table. Hopefully this gets you going in the right direction.

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It depends on what you want to achieve, if you want to know what mysql will do with your query you might be interessted in http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/explain.html

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Turn autocommit off, run your query and then rollback. It's universal and I know of no other way that's as simple as this.