Don't know, but it was just one of this little tricks I remember from back in the 2.6 days, pre VFP.

>You learn something NEW-OLD everyday around here!!! I wonder if this is in the HELP with VFP somewhere?????
>
>>Known way that SELECT works. If the first value the SELECT pulls is 0, the field would only be 1 numeric wide, not large enough for your use. Setting the field to a 0 value as you've disccovered with the proper width fixes it. In VFP9, this can be dealt with using the CAST() function.