>;-)
>Of course, you're right and not right. type() is slower because it uses error handling method (message() function after type() returns quite funny error messages sometimes ;). PEMSTATUS just reads the structures of object definition in memory. Completely different ways.
Vlad,

I have never gotten an error using TYPE() for checking the existance on an object. What error have you gotten?

TYPE() takes longer because it evaluate the data type of an expression therefore it must first evaluate the expression which requires parsing the expression. PEMStatus() just reads the PEMs of an object. The problem is that PEMStatus() will error if one of the objects in the reference does not exist while type() will simply return U for undefined.

VarType() is a totally different situation from Type().