On Oct 6, 2005, at 9:20 AM, David A. Black wrote: > It's always the case that > > bareword = <anything> > > is parsed as a local variable assignment, not a method call. You're right, of course. I was thinking of how Ruby cleverly distinguishes local variables from method calls (described on page 329 of the Pickaxe2) and confused myself. Sorry for the noise. James Edward Gray II