Can I run a loop in MySQL without using a procedure/function?

Question

For testing, is it possible to run a loop from MySQL workbench or similar tool? I tried but got an error.

If it is possible, please supply a simple example I can run.

Answer 1

Supposed that you already have an arbitrary table myOldTable which is sufficiently long you could use the following trick:

set @counter = 0;
select (@counter := @counter+1), @counter*@counter from myOldTable limit 1000;