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I would just add a fetch_scalar() function. It makes some common operations get very readable:

$total_users = $db->fetch_scalar("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users");

fetch_column() does essentially that. You can pass in the column number you want fetched, in this case, it would be the 0th column.

I know. I would at least add it as an alias to $fetch_column(0), out of sheer readability preciosism =D