MySQL: how do I get a for loop from a comma separated list?

Question

I want to create sqlstring, prepare stmt, execute stmt for a long list of integer values

for i in (6500,6700,15781,..,79865)
  for j in string values ("TT","FF","DD","RH")
     long .sql script;
  end for j
end for i

In Informix SQL it is like:

FOR i IN (1 TO 20 STEP 5, 20 to 1 STEP -5, 1,2,3,4,5)
. . .
END FOR:

see http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/idshelp/v10/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.sqlt.doc/sqltmst275.htm

I'm new to mysql and the syntax differs from what I'm used to. Creating a procedure seems to me a bit odd to get this working.

Answer 1

MySQL doesn't have an array type, and your list of integer values is a literal array, so there is no way to represent that list natively in MySQL, or indeed use it as a loop control.

You've basically two ways to solve this:

• Either do it in app code, where you'll happily have syntax similar to that you present as an example
• ...or express the problem as a query (for example a CROSS JOIN ) between two tables, each one containing the data in your literal array or list.