As you surely know, you don't need the brackets, ?laVal is enough to get the first element.

>>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]
>