MSQL and LITE problems

[Tad]

I'm trying to use the LITE language to talk to a msql database to generate a
system quote, but when I pull data out of the DB using the following set of
functions, it seems to return the COST field as text rather than MONEY which
it's set at... am I doing something in this code that would be forcing the
values to strings???

CODE:
$sock = msqlConnect();

msqlSelectDB($sock,"rsparts");

msqlQuery($sock,"select part_no,cost,descr FROM rsparts WHERE
descr='$CPU'");

*NOTE: $CPU is a variable created by passing a form to this script...

$res = msqlStoreResult();
$row = msqlFetchRow($res);
$total = $total + $row[1];
^when I do this it appends words together ie: [222 + 333 = 222333]

Any help would be appreciated!!!
I'm at: efi...@rave.net