> IMO, it'd be great to have the original string returned if substitution(s) couldn't be made.

Sorry in advance in case I miss the point.

Wouldn¡Çt that introduce an incompatibility with many scripts?

Say I have a string that I¡Çm not sure if it contains html or not. So I run gsub just like you mentioned and store its result in a local variable. Then I go on working on my copy of... wait, I don¡Çt know anymore if the string returned by gsub is a copy or not.

So my code should now resemble this to match your changes:

    safestring = mystring.gsub(...)
    safestring = mystring.dup if sameobject?(safestring, mystring)

Or more "simple":

    safestring = mystring.gsub(...).dup

Which is clearly not cool.

I think it is better to just duplicate the string from the start and then, use the destructive alternatives in the loop. (Which I would think doesn¡Çt quiet match your use case after looking back at your post.)

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