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The flavor function, like the origin function, does notoperate on the values of variables but rather it tells you somethingabout a variable. Specifically, it tells you the flavor of avariable (see The Two Flavors of Variables).

The syntax of the flavor function is:

Note that variable is the name of a variable to inquire about,not a reference to that variable. Therefore you would not normallyuse a ‘$’ or parentheses when writing it. (You can, however, use avariable reference in the name if you want the name not to be a constant.)

The result of this function is a string that identifies the flavor of thevariable variable:

if variable was never defined.

if variable is a recursively expanded variable.

if variable is a simply expanded variable.