The LIMIT clause does what it sounds like and limits the number of rows returned from your SELECT statement. For example, if I wanted to only see 5 rows from my employee table I might use a SQL statement like this:
SELECT * FROM employee LIMIT 5;
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+
| id | first_name | last_name | dept | salary | hire_date |
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+
| 1 | Joe | Jones | Sales | 1034.23 | 2015-01-15 |
| 2 | Sally | Smith | Sales | 1195.98 | 2015-01-15 |
| 3 | Lisa | Teal | Engineering | 2496.78 | 2019-03-10 |
| 4 | Gunner | Greenburg | Engineering | 2169.32 | 2017-09-22 |
| 5 | Jack | Doe | Finance | 1945.42 | 2018-06-20 |
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+The SELECT statement will simply return the first 5 rows it scans. What if you wanted to see the 5 highest-paid employees? In that case, you would combine the LIMIT clause with an ORDER BY.
SELECT * FROM employee
ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 5;
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+
| id | first_name | last_name | dept | salary | hire_date |
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+
| 9 | Mark | Thompson | [NULL] | 3638.42 | 2008-11-22 |
| 3 | Lisa | Teal | Engineering | 2496.78 | 2019-03-10 |
| 4 | Gunner | Greenburg | Engineering | 2169.32 | 2017-09-22 |
| 5 | Jack | Doe | Finance | 1945.42 | 2018-06-20 |
| 8 | Sam | Lopez | | 1658.00 | 2014-02-25 |
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+Next, we can ask the database to tell us who is the second-highest-paid employee by combining LIMIT with an OFFSET value. This is also known as paging.
SELECT * FROM employee
ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 1;
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+
| id | first_name | last_name | dept | salary | hire_date |
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+
| 3 | Lisa | Teal | Engineering | 2496.78 | 2019-03-10 |
+----+------------+-----------+-------------+---------+------------+In the above example, we are aking the database to first sort the rows descending by salary, then skip the 1st row and return the next 1 row. ORDER BY is a simple concept, but one you will use often. Generally, PostgreSQL will return rows in the order they were inserted into a table, but there is no guarantee of that order unless you specify the ORDER BY clause.
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