there are two kinds of LIMIT clauses -those that can be applied during a search and those that can only be applied afterwards. Strictly speaking, a LIMIT clause without an ORDER BY clause makes no sense since it depends on the physical ordering of rows (which nothing ever should). But given the way S::S operates, I allow it to do LIMIT without ORDER BY since that's the only way to actually limit what is being searched as distinct from limiting a result set after a search.