Here is what I'm trying to do: - i need a function that when passed as an argument an ID (for a category of things) will provide all the subcategories and the sub-sub categories and sub-sub-sub..etc. - i was thinking to use a recursive function since i don't know the number of subcategories their sub-subcategories and so on so here is what i've tried to do so far

function categoryChild($id) {

    $s = "SELECT * FROM PLD_CATEGORY WHERE PARENT_ID = $id";
    $r = mysql_query($s);

    if(mysql_num_rows($r) > 0) {

        while($row = mysql_fetch_array($r))
            echo $row['ID'].",".categoryChild($row['ID']);
    }
    else {
        $row = mysql_fetch_array($r);
        return $row['ID'];
    }
}

If i use return instead of echo, i won't get the same result. I need some help in order to fix this or rewrite it from scratch