Thank you for your solutions to my problem. I did not know the
function -type-.
A number of the 'macro extended functions' are exceedingly handy
creatures. If you don't have the Programming manual handy, do 'whelp
macro' and click on the hyperlink 'extended_fcn'. Scan through the list
and you will see quite a few useful tools. (There does not seem to be
one that will extract the format of a variable, strangely enough!)
