mysqldb: Rows READ or Processed

[mcl]

I have looked through Python Database API Specification v2.0, but can
not find any reference to the number of records processed in a select
query.

I know I can get the number of records returned with cursor.rowcount,
but I want to know the number of records processed.

I suppose the info is in one of the internal tables, but I can not
find any info on that, because phpMyAdmin shows the number of rows in
a table.

I suppose I could use count(*), but would that process all the
records, which would seem a bit silly.

What is the best method ?

Richard