The TYPE() function evaluates expression passed to it not the type of the field. AFIELDS() + ASCAN() will do the trick

>I need to preprocess a table or cursor and replace all nulls with zeros for numeric fields and spaces for character, empty dates, etc.
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>I have mytable open, it has a column - rate
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>I put numeric data into it
>?vartype(mytable.rate) && shows N
>?type("mytable.rate") && shows N
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>I put a null into it the data
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>?vartype(mytable.rate) && shows X
>?type("mytable.rate") && shows N
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>So it looks like vartype is evaluating the data type of the data in the field, whereas type is evaluating the data type of the field? In this case, what I need is the data type of the field. I guess I can rely on type for this?
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>Ideally though I'd like to have a function like get_field_datatype(). I could create one by creating a temp table with copy structure extended and querying that table for the field's data type. I don't see though that a native function exists to do this?