What is the most straightforward way to pad empty dates in sql results (on either mysql or perl end)?

Question

I\'m building a quick csv from a mysql table with a query like:

select DATE(date),count(date) from table group by DATE(date) order by date asc;

Answer 1

I don't know if this would work, but how about if you created a new table which contained all the possible dates (that might be the problem with this idea, if the range of dates is going to change unpredictably...) and then do a left join on the two tables? I guess it's a crazy solution if there are a vast number of possible dates, or no way to predict the first and last date, but if the range of dates is either fixed or easy to work out, then this might work.