My simple MySql query does not use the index

I have a very simple query:

  SELECT   comments.*
  FROM comments
  WHERE comments.imageid=46

And this is my table:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `comments` (
  `id` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `imageid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  `uid` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  `content` text CHARACTER SET utf8,
  `adate` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `ip` int(10) unsigned DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `ids` (`imageid`) USING BTREE,
  KEY `dt` (`adate`) USING BTREE
) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=12 ;

But MySql can't use index on this simple query. here is the explain result:

id  select_type     table   type    possible_keys   key     key_len     ref     rows    filtered    Extra
1   SIMPLE  comments    ALL     ids     NULL    NULL    NULL    4   75.00   Using where

while I change the query to this, Mysql can use index. Why? :

  SELECT   comments.id
  FROM comments
  WHERE comments.imageid=46

here is the explain:

id  select_type     table   type    possible_keys   key     key_len     ref     rows    filtered    Extra
1   SIMPLE  comments    ref     ids     ids     4   const   4   100.00  Using index

---

I guess that you have few rows in 'comments' table, this is why MySQL is doing a full table scan instead of using the index in your first query. It's estimating that the cost of a full table scan may be lower than first match the index and then lookup the rows.

In your second query is using the index because it is possible to get all the columns of the query (the 'id' column) directly from the index with no need to lookup the table rows after matching the index. This is the meaning of "Using index" extra information.

Try if with a significant number of rows in 'comments' MySQL still uses a full scan, I think that it would be a strange behaviour. In fact, I've tested exactly the same in a MySQL version 5.1 and it's always using the 'index' even with few rows.