Then you would need to do something like
if ($_POST['val']!='0' && $_POST['val']!=0) {
$q="SELECT sum(credits) FROM courses WHERE course_code='$val'";
if ($result2=mysql_query($q))
$count2= mysql_num_rows($result2);
$row = mysql_fetch_row($result2);
$first=$row[0];
} else {
$first=0;
}