Why is this query not working? I have this snippet:

$nid = db_query("select nid from {node} where title = :title", array(':title' = 'scrivimi'))-&gt;fetchField();
dsm($nid);


It should work, at least from what I've read around the drupal api reference, but it doesn't.

I think the problem is with placeholders. In fact, if I execute the query without them, it runs perfectly, and returns the expected result!

Can you help me please?

I am using Drupal 7 (updated to the latest version), and I am testing this code using the Devel module.
You have a tiny error in your code, the placeholder array should be 

array(':title' =&gt; 'scrivimi')


not

array(':title' = 'scrivimi')