>Thanks Sergey and James. I had stopped coding in VFP for the past year or so, doing other stuff. My memory isn't what it used to be. I've used afields a zillion times, but I didn't think of it.. lol.
>
>Regarding the type function, I still don't get it - why doesn't it return X then, when there is a null in the field, like vartype does?


The TYPE() function existed before NULLs were introduced in FoxPro.
The VARTYPE() function returns type as well when second parameter is .T.
IMO, it should be default behavior.