On 2007-02-22, S. Robert James <srobertjames / gmail.com> wrote: > puts nil outputs "nil". Shouldn't it output "" (ie, nothing), which > is nil.to_s? The source code specifically checks for the nil object and outputs "nil" instead of nil.to_s . It's clearly a deliberate decision by the developers to make nil a special case. The docs don't mention it, and I agree that they should. Regards, Jeremy Henty