Issue #649 has been updated by Roger Pack. 1.9 exhibits the same behavior. I believe it's caused by the fact that somehow a's original Array is referenced somewhere [stack? somewhere] so ruby doesn't collect it and thus doesn't collect its contents. I wonder if there's a bug in there, though. Anybody want to go after it with me? -=R ---------------------------------------- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/649 ---------------------------------------- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org