Select numbers between a range (1 to 100) in sqlite

Question

I know some of the solutions in SQL but couldn't find any of them from SQlite.

I just want to execute a select query that returns a resultset of numbers ranging from 1 to 100.

Numbers
  1
  2
  3
  4
  ......
  5

A correction: I don't actually have a table at all. (however a solution is encouraged with a virtual table like dual in MySQL)

Answer 1

The generate_series(START, STOP, STEP) table-valued function is a loadable extension included in the SQLite source tree, and compiled into the command-line shell. The generate_series() table has one visible result column named value holding integer values and a number of rows determined by the parameters START, STOP, and STEP. The first row of the table has a value of START. Subsequent rows increment by STEP to a value not exceeding STOP.

So what you have to do is:

SELECT value FROM generate_series(1, 100, 1);

In case it's not available in your SQLite version¹, as the documentation suggests you can use this recursive common table expression (which will be slower):

WITH RECURSIVE generate_series(value) AS (
  SELECT 1
  UNION ALL
  SELECT value + 1 FROM generate_series
   WHERE value + 1 <= 100
)
SELECT value FROM generate_series;

---

¹ It's not available in the sqlite3 module that comes with Python 3.8 and 3.12 from the Anaconda distribution, and 3.13 from Fedora Linux.

Answer 2

SELECT * FROM Numbers limit 1, 100;

Answer 3

I don't think SQLite has a clean way to do this, so you'll need to use a virtual table interface. SQLite ships one for 'C', and apsw has one for python as I'll demonstrate below. Here's documentation for the APSW Virtual Table interface.

#!/usr/bin/python
import apsw,tempfile

### Opening/creating database
filename=tempfile.mktemp() #insecure - do not use in production code
connection=apsw.Connection(filename)
cursor=connection.cursor()

# This gets registered with the Connection
class Source:
    def Create(self, db, modulename, dbname, tablename, *args):
        schema="create table foo( dummy integer )"
        return schema,Table()
    Connect=Create

# Represents a table
class Table:
    def __init__(self):
        pass

    def BestIndex(self, constraints, orderbys):
        used = []
        self.constraints = []
        ucount = 0
        for c in constraints:
            if c[1] in (
                         apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_GT, 
                         apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_GE,
                         apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_LT,
                         apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_LE,
                         apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_EQ,
                       ):
                used.append( ucount ) #tell sqlite we want to use this one
                self.constraints.append( c[1] ) #save some for later
            else:
                used.append( None ) #skip anything we don't understand
            ucount += 1
        return ( used,    # used constraints list
                  0,      # index number - no biggie we only support one right now
               )

    def Open(self):
        return Cursor(self)

    def Disconnect(self):
        pass

    Destroy=Disconnect

# Represents a cursor
class Cursor:
    def __init__(self, table):
        self.table=table

    def Filter(self, indexnum, indexname, constraintargs):
        start = 0
        self.end = 4000000000
        #map constraint arguments to start and end of generation
        for tc, ca in zip( self.table.constraints, constraintargs ):
            if tc == apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_EQ:
                start = ca
                self.end = ca
            elif tc == apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_LE:
                if self.end > ca:
                    self.end = ca
            elif tc == apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_LT:
                if self.end >= ca:
                    self.end = ca
            elif tc == apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_GE:
                if start < ca:
                    start = ca
            elif tc == apsw.SQLITE_INDEX_CONSTRAINT_GT:
                if start >= ca:
                    start = ca
        self.pos = start

    def Eof(self):
        return self.pos > self.end

    def Rowid(self):
        return self.pos

    def Next(self):
        self.pos+=1

    def Close(self):
        pass

# Register the module as intsource, you can make a bunch if needed
connection.createmodule("intsource", Source())

# Create virtual table to use intsource
cursor.execute("create virtual table uints using intsource()")

# Do some counting
for i in cursor.execute("SELECT rowid FROM uints WHERE rowid BETWEEN 1 AND 100"):
    print i

This implements a virtual-table type named "intsource", which by default counts from 0 to 4*10^9. It supports directly filtering by equality and comparison, but any other constraints will still be filtered out by sqlite. Virtual tables are a very powerful concept you can do a lot with, this is probably one of the simplest uses for them. Also, thank you for a good excuse to try out a new virtual table API.

Answer 4

Thanks sgmentzer! Inspired by your answer I went ahead and also found this:

WITH RECURSIVE
  cnt(x) AS (
     SELECT 1
     UNION ALL
     SELECT x+1 FROM cnt
      LIMIT 100000
  )
SELECT x FROM cnt;

Answer 5

Example subquery to generate the series 1 <= n <= 100000 in SQLite. No table is created or used.

select 1+e+d*10+c*100+b*1000+a*10000 as n from
(select 0 as a union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9),
(select 0 as b union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9),
(select 0 as c union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9),
(select 0 as d union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9),
(select 0 as e union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9);

Answer 6

SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE myNumber BETWEEN 1 AND 100;

This is more efficient than using 2 WHERE clauses.

Answer 7

If your goal is to select actual records from a table with values between 1 and 100, use BETWEEN as shown by the other respondents.

If your goal is to generate a sequence of numbers from 1 to 100 without having a table to base it on, I don't believe SQLite has a feature that does this.

Answer 8

How about

SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE myNumber >= 1 AND myNumber <= 100;

?