Has anyone ever had the TYPE function error?

Here's the situation.....

FPD 2.6 on a 486-33 (doesn't need to run on anything faster)

We have an error coming up from a UDF on a variable that is calculated from a parameter.

Trying to get around (what we thought was) the source of the error, decided to try checking the 'type' of the parameters and make sure they were what we expected them to be, but the line

IF type('pStrttime') # 'C'

returns an error along the lines of "Variable Not Found"

Any ideas??