H.Yamamoto wrote: > Umm, is this bug? 1.8.4 saves object's state more accurately. > ... > In 1.8.2, only @create becomes utc. > In 1.8.4, both @create and @date becomes utc. (as well as before > dumping) Correct. I did some research after posting this and concluded it's not a bug. The yaml spec calls this `identity`. ----- identity The first form of equivalence is by reference, where the two variables refer to the same memory address. We call this equivalence relation "identity". ----- The yaml in 1.8.2 doesn't preserve identity. The new 1.8.3 yaml doesn't really interfere with what I'm doing, except readability, since I've been storing references as object ids (like one would with a database). I never considered that yaml could keep track of references. In this particular case setting creation and update time to the same thing on creating an object has no side effects. It was mostly an unexpected "what is this here and what does it mean?!" issue. Thanks J. Lambert