Hi -- I see that symbols now have an #empty? method, but an empty symbol literal is still illegal: irb(main):004:0> :"".empty? SyntaxError: (irb):4: empty symbol literal :"".empty? It can be done with "".intern.empty? but that seems kind of roundabout. Should :"" perhaps be allowed now? David -- David A. Black Director, Ruby Power and Light, LLC Ruby/Rails training and consulting http://www.rubypal.com