On Monday 03 November 2003 10:46, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote: ... > |p ("a"..."f").min {|a,b| a <=> b } # nil ... > That's weird. Mine gives > > ruby -ve 'p ("a"..."f").min {|a,b| a <=> b }' > ruby 1.8.1 (2003-10-31) [i686-linux] > -e:1: warning: (...) interpreted as grouped expression > "a" Or, put another way, grouping. Ruby is parsing this as ( p ("a"..."f") ).min {|a,b| a<=>b} Christoph, you're seeing the return value of the function p(), which is always nil. p "a" # => nil p ("a"..."f") # => nil So, p( ("a"..."f").min{|a,b| a<=>b} ) will be nil, too. I don't know why, on your machine, Ruby isn't warning you about the grouping, but wasn't your question about why ("a"..."f").min{|a,b| a<=>b} appeared to be returning nil? --- SER