>I am trying to put the value of an sql count(*) operation into a variable rather then a table, can this be done?
>
>I've tried "SELECT count(*) FROM m:4vs WHERE date_l_in =today to y1" but I'm not getting a figure when I know it's >1.

You can put result into an array

SELECT count(*) ;
  FROM m4vs ;
  WHERE date_l_in = today ;
  INTO ARRAY laVal
? laVal[1]