fetch-specific-number-of-results.md

Fetch Specific Number Of Results

If you pull up just about any intro to PostgreSQL (or even SQL), one of the first things they are going to teach you is the limit clause. This is taught as the way for limiting the result set to a specific number of rows.

> select title from books limit 4;
+-----------------------+
| title                 |
|-----------------------|
| The Secret History    |
| A Gentleman in Moscow |
| Exhalation: Stores    |
| Annihilation          |
+-----------------------+
SELECT 4

You might be as surprised as I was to learn that limit is not part of the SQL standard. It is extremely common for this use case, but the SQL standard defines fetch first N rows only as the way to fetch a specific number of rows. As we can see, it works identically to limit N.

> select title from books fetch first 4 rows only;
+-----------------------+
| title                 |
|-----------------------|
| The Secret History    |
| A Gentleman in Moscow |
| Exhalation: Stores    |
| Annihilation          |
+-----------------------+
SELECT 4

The rows and row keywords are interchangeable which makes statements more readable if, for instance, you're doing ... fetch first 1 row only.

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