>Ed,
>
>Vartype() will handle a non-existent memvar with U, but vartype() will choke if you try and go down to nonexistent contained objects.
>

It melted down when I entered foo.bar for an argument, The actual error is Alias "Foo" is not found. It also smokes on foo.bar[1] with Object "FOO" is not found. I assumed the same happened with a simple variable name. Sorry.

>clear all
>? vartype( y ) && U
>? vartype( y.one ) && choke on "table" y
>? vartype( y.one.two ) && choke on object y
>
>>If the variable doesn't exist, VATYPE() smokes with a Variable "whatever" not found, so if the variable might not exist, or might be out of scope, TYPE() is still preferable.