### 3.6.5 Using User-Defined Variables

 You can employ MySQL user variables to remember results without having to store them in temporary variables in the client. (See [Section 9.4, “User-Defined Variables”](user-variables.html).)

 For example, to find the articles with the highest and lowest price you can do this:

```
mysql> SELECT @min_price:=MIN(price),@max_price:=MAX(price) FROM shop;
mysql> SELECT * FROM shop WHERE price=@min_price OR price=@max_price;
+---------+--------+-------+
| article | dealer | price |
+---------+--------+-------+
|    0003 | D      |  1.25 |
|    0004 | D      | 19.95 |
+---------+--------+-------+
```

Note

 It is also possible to store the name of a database object such as a table or a column in a user variable and then to use this variable in an SQL statement; however, this requires the use of a prepared statement. See [Section 13.5, “Prepared Statements”](sql-prepared-statements.html), for more information.

