I am trying to get the value of a count into into a variable to be used with another query.

**BUT** it does not work, it says: 

> 
> [Err] 1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'SELECT COUNT(columnname) FROM field WHERE tabid = 4' at line 1
> 
> 
> 

The query I am using is:

```
SET @_count = SELECT COUNT(columnname) FROM field WHERE tabid = 4;

```