Hi *, I like to concatenate a string out of some variables, some of which are nil. Instead of getting always a "can't convert nil into String (TypeError)" message, I would like to have "nil" appended to my string, as in Java null objects are printed as null in Strings. Something like this: words = Hash.new words[0]="one" allWords = "all words:" allWords << words[0] allWords << words[1] # --> can't convert nil into String (TypeError) Is this possible? Or how can I handle nil objects for this case? Thanks.