Syntax:
ROW_COUNT()

In MySQL 5.6, ROW_COUNT() returns a value as follows:

o DDL statements: 0. This applies to statements such as CREATE TABLE or
  DROP TABLE.

o DML statements other than SELECT: The number of affected rows. This
  applies to statements such as UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE (as before),
  but now also to statements such as ALTER TABLE and LOAD DATA INFILE.

o SELECT: -1 if the statement returns a result set, or the number of
  rows "affected" if it does not. For example, for SELECT * FROM t1,
  ROW_COUNT() returns -1. For SELECT * FROM t1 INTO OUTFILE
  'file_name', ROW_COUNT() returns the number of rows written to the
  file.

o SIGNAL statements: 0.

For UPDATE statements, the affected-rows value by default is the number
of rows actually changed. If you specify the CLIENT_FOUND_ROWS flag to
mysql_real_connect() when connecting to mysqld, the affected-rows value
is the number of rows "found"; that is, matched by the WHERE clause.

For REPLACE statements, the affected-rows value is 2 if the new row
replaced an old row, because in this case, one row was inserted after
the duplicate was deleted.

For INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE statements, the affected-rows
value per row is 1 if the row is inserted as a new row, 2 if an
existing row is updated, and 0 if an existing row is set to its current
values. If you specify the CLIENT_FOUND_ROWS flag, the affected-rows
value is 1 (not 0) if an existing row is set to its current values.

The ROW_COUNT() value is similar to the value from the
mysql_affected_rows() C API function and the row count that the mysql
client displays following statement execution.

URL: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/information-functions.html

