SELECT INTO Variable in MySQL DECLARE causes syntax error?

Question

I´d like to SELECT a single value into a variable. I´d tried to following:

DECLARE myvar INT(4);

-- immediately returns some syntax error.<

Answer 1

In the end a stored procedure was the solution for my problem. Here´s what helped:

DELIMITER //
CREATE PROCEDURE test ()
  BEGIN
  DECLARE myvar DOUBLE;
  SELECT somevalue INTO myvar FROM mytable WHERE uid=1;
  SELECT myvar;
  END
  //

DELIMITER ;

call test ();