you dont have an alternative. you will have to loop because mysql_fetch_* functions fetch only one row at a time.
you can use variable variables to achieve the above result (you will not require this if u use list() or extract() functions) http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.variable.php and if you cant do the job with arrays, and u need separate variables list would be an useful function as suggested earlier. you may also consider using http://in.php.net/manual/en/function.extract.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
