Learned something interesting (to me) today. In a fixture file I'm using to test some db code, I need a field to contain an empty string. I had no idea how to encode that in YAML. I checked the faq but it consists of one entry about tabs. :-) I also searched this list and the Rails list going back to Jan 2005 and came up dry. irb to the rescue: cremes$ irb irb(main):001:0> require 'yaml' => true irb(main):002:0> empty = "" => "" irb(main):003:0> empty.to_yaml => "--- \"\"\n" I put that into my fixture file (just the \"\") and everything is peachy. Next time I'll experiment with irb *first*. cr