Thanks Dale.  I'm not actually looking for a workaround.  Snippet #1 of 
my original post does work. I'm trying to understand why snippet #2 
doesn't.

The only difference between the two are the whitespaces.  If someone 
could help me understand how snippet #2 is being parsed/read by the 
interpretter that would be super.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.