var t = ( from t in things where t.id = lookupID select t.id).FirstOrDefault();
Because I prefer the SQL syntax. Ooops I'm awake and back at the screen. Thanks, at 10pm last night I didn't think of "inverting" the query. I do get 0 instead of (int?)null as a default in this case, but that's actually convenient for my particular case. I was afraid that sticking this sub-query into an EF4 query of a SQLite database might penalise performance, but it makes no difference. I suppose the Db engine turns it into an efficient join. Greg
