Asterisks in variable declarations in VB6

What's the meaning of the asterisk (*) and the number, after the variable declaration? As seen in WpName As String * 6

Public Type WayPoint

   WpIndex As Integer
   WpName As String * 6
开发者_StackOverflow   WpLat As Double
   WpLon As Double
   WpLatDir As String * 1
   WpLonDir As String * 1

End Type

The asterisk declares the variable as a fixed-length string, where the number indicates the length of the string:

http://www.1sayfa.com/1024/diger/vb/ch07.htm#Heading8

The declaration of a fixed-length string variable contains an asterisk (*) to tell Visual Basic that the string will be a fixed length. The final parameter, strlength, tells the program the number of characters that the variable can contain.

They may be required for an API call, see this question:

VB6 - Is there any performance benefit gained by using fixed-width strings in VB6?

The only time in VB6 or earlier that I had to use fixed length strings was with working with API calls.