mysql_result alternative?

[Azu]

I often use mysql_result for just fetching a single row with a single column in if statements, because this way I don't have to assign it to a variable first, I can just use it.

 

But I want to switch to using mysqli and there is no mysqli_result so please tell me how to change this so that it works in mysqli

 

if($a=='blah'&&$b=mysql_result(mysql_query("select count(*) from `db`.`table`"),0))echo $b;

 

 

I know that I could change it to

if($a=='blah'){

$b=mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("select count(*) from `db`.`table`"));

if($b[0])echo $b[0];}

 

But that would be bloating my code and I don't want to do that, and it would get really messy in big if statements.