On 03/08/2006, at 7:04 PM, Sven Suska wrote: > Sorry, I had forgotten to give enough information: > > > 1. rks is a local variable! > > The statement sequence is actually: > > rks = vt.rks > p [:rks_length, rks.length] > p [:rks_size, rks.size] > ... > > And this is inside a Test::Unit class, where I have not defined a > rks= writer method. So vt is an ActiveRecord object, and vt.rks refers to an ActiveRecord association? If this is the case, rks is not an Array as you claim; it's an ActiveRecord association object which is a proxy to the data. Pete Yandell