title: Saving a select count(*) value to an integer (SQL Server)
body: <p>I'm having some trouble with this statement, owing no doubt to my ignorance of what is returned from this select statement:</p>
  
  <pre><code>declare @myInt as INT
  set @myInt = (select COUNT(*) from myTable as count)
  
  if(@myInt &lt;&gt; 0) 
  begin
     print 'there's something in the table'
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>There are records in myTable, but when I run the code above the print statement is never run.  Further checks show that myInt is in fact zero after the assignment above.  I'm sure I'm missing something, but I assumed that a select count would return a scalar that I could use above?</p>