total row count for selects with a limit

Hi there,

what seems to be the best way of getting the total row number on select queries with a limit on them?

What I am currently thinking of doing is building select queries dynamically and wrapping all selected fields into the count() function without the limit

somthing like:

select a,b,c from table limit 10

and for total count

select count(a,b,c) from table

and a function to build the select query with parameters such as

function build_select($table, $cols=array(), $limit, $orderby, $where) { ... }

I am going in the right direction? Instead of one query I need 2 is there a way of making it just one query?

thanks for any help

regards, Peter