How to select into a variable in PL/SQL when the result might be null?

Question

Is there a way in to just run a query once to select into a variable, considering that the query might return nothing, then in that case the variable should be null.

Answer 1

What about using MAX? That way if no data is found the variable is set to NULL, otherwise the maximum value.
Since you expect either 0 or 1 value, MAX should be OK to use.

v_column my_table.column%TYPE;
select MAX(column) into v_column from my_table where ...;