On Jan 26, 2007, at 7:35 PM, atraver / gmail.com wrote: > a = 42 > eval <<-STR > puts "hi" if a =~ /\d{2}/ > STR If you want this to write "hi" to stdout, it should be a = "42" eval <<'STR' puts "hi" if a =~ /\d{2}/ STR Notes 1. the variable a must reference a string not a number. 2. single-quoting STR tells Ruby to use single-quote rules for the HERE doc. 3. the - after << is not needed since the final STR is not indented. See the Pickaxe book Part III/Basic Types/Strings for more info. Regards, Morton