>Fred Taylor's solution is what I use. It's short, clean, and to the point. No need to complicate or write useless code if this does the very same thing.

In my case, and keep in mind that is just my personal preference I am not saying your code is useless, I try never to use a generic function to get a particular result when there is a function which has been written specifically to address that particular need, in this case the Field() function specifically addresses the original poster question so I would use it even if Type returned the correct result always, which is not the case by the way, there is a thread somewhere but I think the gist of it is something like this (I think there are better examples in the aforementioned thread)

create cursor yourtable (yourfield I)

yourtable	= Createobject('Empty')
Addproperty(yourtable, 'fieldname', 'Object')

? TYPE("yourtable.fieldname") <> "U", Empty(Field('fieldName'))