title: What does the ampersand and $ symbol mean in the following contexts?
body: <p>I'm in the process of a code review and have come across this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Dim lngLen As Long    
  lngLen = 16&amp;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have done some reading and it appears to be that this is a way of casting the number to a long - is that correct? </p>
  
  <p>But is that really necessary here as you can just assign <code>lngLen</code> the value of 16 because it's a numeric value. </p>
  
  <p>Also, following this code this is done:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Dim strCompName As String   
  strCompName = String$(lngLen, 0&amp;)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I realize the <code>String</code> method, from the Access help definitions, "returns a variant containing a repreating character string of the length specified." </p>
  
  <p>So what does the $ do? And again is the &amp; casting the 0 to a long?</p>