Whats the best way to get total # of records in a mysql table with php?

Question

Whats the most efficient way of selecting total number of records from a large table? Currently, Im simply doing

$result = mysql_query(\"SELECT id FROM table         


        

Answer 1

Even though I agree to use the built-in functions, I don't really see any performance difference between mysql_num_rows and count(id). For 25000 results, same performance (can say exact.) Just for the record.