>>No problem! How about on your pc contributors? Try it and see...
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>Jeff,
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>because it wokrs on your machine does not discount the fact that numerics are converted from a character string in the dbf to an binary number in memory. That conversion can cuase a number that looks and acts like 0 to really be 0.00000001 and using the equal sign will say they aren't the same value.
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>This can happen for a variety of reasons. The solution to prevent it form ever biting you is to avoid the = operator for comparing numbers especially wehn one is a field in a dbf and the other is in memory. In prior version there was bug (which has been fixed) that cause an index on a numeric field to fail on a seek for a value that for purposes was in the table.
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>In the example situatio in this thread the solution sits in comparing for a range of values that would be considered 0. If the numeric field has 2 decimals then;
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>IF Field < 0.01
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>If it might be negative;
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>IF Field < 0.01 and Field > -0.01
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>These IF's side step any binary rounding problem.

Yes, but recalling the original thread, it says 'Even if the fields Late, Absent, & Early contain zeros (0.00)...', thus, assuring us that the physical value sitting in the disk is really 0.00.

Could numeric field that has 2 decimals can physically contain 0.00000001? Just asking...