Maximum length of mySQL request ?

[jbv at souslelogo.com]

Hi list,

Is there a maximum length limit for mySQL requests ?
I don't mean the results returned by mySQL, but the request itself.

For instance, I have a table with 180000 entries and counting, and
I will need to send requests such as :
SELECT FROM myTable WHERE id = 5523 OR id = 7831 OR id = 162814 OR id = 
34895...
and at times the request might concern 100 ids or even more.

I am not too concerned about execution speed, as id is a unique key,
but rather for the request itself : I wonder if it might be truncated
if too long...
Or perhaps a better and safer practice would be to break it into a serie 
of
shorter successive requests when it exceeds a certain threshold ?

Thank you in advance.
jbv