>>Hi,
>>
>>I am writing (what appears to be) a simple stored procedure where the first equal sign (=) always shown with squiggly red underline and the message 'Incorrect syntax new ='
>>
>>

>>	IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT @InvenPk = INVEN_PK, @UnitPrice = Unit_Price, @CurrStockQty = INSTOCK FROM Parts where inv_code = @Inv_Code)
>>

>>
>>If I remove the first column select the error moves to the next one.
>>
>>What am I missing?
>
>You can not assign variables in IF.
>You could use either:
>

>IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * Parts where inv_code = @Inv_Code)
>   SELECT @InvenPk = INVEN_PK,
>          @UnitPrice = Unit_Price,
>          @CurrStockQty = INSTOCK 
>   FROM Parts
>   where inv_code = @Inv_Code
>

>either:
>

>SET @InvenPk = NULL -- no need of this line if you only declared variable w/o initialize it.
>SELECT @InvenPk = INVEN_PK,
>       @UnitPrice = Unit_Price,
>       @CurrStockQty = INSTOCK 
>FROM Parts
>where inv_code = @Inv_Code
>IF @InvenPk IS NOT NULL
>

>
>The first will be faster if you have many records. Just because EXISTS stops executing after the first match.

First, thank you for your suggestions. But I thought that using @@ROWCOUNT would be faster. The reason is that the procedure needs the values of the INVEN_PK, UNIT_PRICE, and so on. So rather than having 2 SQL Select statements I will go with one SQL Select and then check if any records are found.