John,

The TYPE() function evaluates it's parameter and checks the type of result. If you include TableField variable into quotes, than it returns the type of that variable, which is charactes ("Table.Field"). W/o quotes it'll return the type of expression stored in the variable.

? type(TableField)

>TableField = "Table.Field"
>?type("TableField")
>
>The type of the "TableField" may be a date, an integer or whatever but he type function will always return "C".
>
>How can I get the data type of a table field whose name is in a variable?