------ art_64534_292895.1151418115819 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Hopefully I am not confused about the documentation I would hate to create such a fuss, let us see now: The official ruby documentation is on http://www.ruby-doc.org/ with a link to the 1.8.4 core API here: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/ which has in turn the documentation for class Object here: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Object.html and in particular the documentation on Object#== here : http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Object.html#M001412 I am copying and pasting this documentation (again ;) into this post: [BEGIN COPY] obj == other => true or false obj.equal?(other) => true or false obj.eql?(other) => true or false <http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Object.src/M001412.html> Equality͢t the Object <http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Object.html>level, == returns true only if *obj* and *other* are the same object. Typically, this method is overridden in descendent classes to provide class-specific meaning. Unlike ==, the equal? method should never be overridden by subclasses: it is used to determine object identity (that is, a.equal?(b) iff a is the same object as b). The eql? method returns true if *obj* and *anObject* have the same value. Used by Hash <http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Hash.html> to test members for equality. For objects of class Object<http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Object.html>, eql? is synonymous with ==. Subclasses normally continue this tradition, but there are exceptions. Numeric<http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Numeric.html>types, for example, perform type conversion across ==, but not across eql?, so: 1 == 1.0 #=> true 1.eql? 1.0 #=> false <http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Object.src/M001414.html> [END COPY] Apart from talking about the #equal? method it states clearly that *normally* the #eql? stays a synonym for #== and we can conclude that... I cannot read!!!!! (in order to stay polite with myself). ty very much All my appologies to Alex and Robert and everyone else following this. I guess I will change my signature to "Trust me I know what I am doing" :( Robert ------ art_64534_292895.1151418115819--