Ok folks...try to hold back the laughter.

I've been away from MySql for a while and now find it neccesary to jump back in...so to that end...

DELETE FROM mlsdb.virtualdb LEFT JOIN mlsdb.mlstable ON (mlsdb.virtualdb.mlsnum = mlsdb.virtualdb.mlsnum)WHERE mlsdb.mlstable.ListID <> mlsdb.virtualdb.mlsnum

I have a db with 19 tables. I need to delete the records from the table "virtualdb" that do not have corresponding ID numbers in the table "mlstable"

I came up with the above...which obviously dosn't work, lol. any help would be appreciated.

TIA

try this,

DELETE mlsdb.virtualdb FROM mlsdb.virtualdb, mlsdb.mlstable
WHERE mlsdb.mlstable.ListID = mlsdb.virtualdb.mlsnum
AND mlsdb.mlstable.ListID IS NULL

this doesn't have a shot at working unless you are running
MySQL 4.0.

MySQL 3.23.54

tried it anyway, but you were right...didnt work. Thanks for the suggestion though!

Then you can make a list of IDs you want to delete,

SELECT mlsdb.virtualdb.mlsnum
FROM mlsdb.virtualdb LEFT JOIN mlsdb.mlstable
ON mlsdb.mlstable.ListID = mlsdb.virtualdb.mlsnum
WHERE mlsdb.mlstable.ListID IS NULL

and delete 'em,

DELETE FROM mlsdb.virtualdb WHERE mlsdb.virtualdb.mlsnum
IN ( <your_list> )