query limit performance

[Ed Wong]

Hi all,
A have a query to obtain the latest 5 items in a table. (no WHERE condition)

explain select name from table order by id desc limit 5;

however, i found that the explain statement shows that it looks at all the rows of the table... i am worry about the performance of such query.

Is it true that even I put a limit there, mysql will still scan all the rows?

please advice. thx

ed