st: assigning a name to the output of the "count"

[sarah smith <sarah22209@gmail.com>]

Dear Stata users, 

I would like to count the number of missing observations in a variable
-var1- of my dataset and perform cetain operations based on the count.
To do this I entered
count if var1 == .
and  I get a number, lets say 40: However, when I wanted to compare
the output of count (here 40) with another number such that:
if count <=50 {....

I receive error message saying that stata could not find count. How
can I assign a name to the output of the count command?

thanks a lot
Sarah
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