MySQL SELECT increment counter

Question

Here is my MySQL query:

SELECT name FROM table;

How can I also select an increment counter alongside name? Expected output:

Answer 1

In MySQL 8 and above you can also use the ROW_NUMBER() Window function.

SELECT
    name,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER ()
FROM table

Result:

Jay  1
roy  2
ravi 3
ram  4

---

As shown by juergen d, it would be a good idea to put an ORDER BY to have a deterministic query.

The ORDER BY can apply to the query and the counter independently. So:

SELECT
    name,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY name DESC)
FROM table
ORDER BY name

would give you a counter in decreasing order.

Result:

Jay  4
ram  3
ravi 2
roy  1