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

What about something like this:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(id) AS total_things from table");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result,MYSQL_ASSOC);
$num_results = $row["total_things"];