Is this an unique user name???

Ok... I am trying to have this registration page search a table in a db to find out if the user name supplied is unique. Here is the syntax that I used but it does not seem to work: <? ..... $var_UserName = addslashes($_POST['User_Name']); ..... $query = "SELECT * FROM company_info WHERE UserName = '"; $query .= $var_UserName."'"; $result = mysql_query($query); // This is where the problem come in... I tried these two options, both // failed. //Opt1 $num_results = mysql_num_rows($result); if( $num_results > 0 ) //this user name is not unique { // exec the error methods.... } else { // add record to db } //Opt2 if( $results ) // To my knowlegde ;) this would be true if $results > 0 { // exec error } else { // add record } ..... ?> Is there something that I am missing? Or actually doing wrong? If anybody would need to see the whole script I would be glad to supply on demand. Thank for your time, -Alex