George,

There is no contradiction;

lcVar = "123"

lcVar is now a character expression, it is a character data type holding a string. If I ask TYPE() to tell the me value of the expression in that string it is numeric. Because type evaluates this way;

TYPE(lcVar)
lcVar = "123"
The type of 123 is N

Using TYPE(lcVar) is exactly the same as saying TYPE("123") because lcVar IS "123"

Now the following doesn't work;

lcVar = "ABC"
TYPE(lcVar)

Because the expression lcVar evaluates to ABC and that is not an expression unless it is the name of a field or variable. So the answer is U undefined.

Analogous to this is the situation when someone thinks they need to compare a logical variable with a logical constant to get a valid expression. You don't, a logical expression IS a logical value just as a character variable is a character expression.