In the book "The Ruby Way" there is a section entitled "What's new in 
1.8". On Page 534 in the bullet on Array Expansion it says:

"Array Expansion: if you assign a = *[1], you now find that a is 1 (rather 
than [1] as before)."

I tried it with the latest cvs of 1.7 (ruby 1.7.2 (2002-02-07) 
[i686-linux]), but it still acts the way it does in 1.6.5:

irb(main):009:0* a = *[1]
[1]
irb(main):010:0> p a
[1]
nil
irb(main):011:0> p a.type
Array
nil
irb(main):012:0> exit
[phill@jed bin]$ ./ruby -v
ruby 1.7.2 (2002-02-07) [i686-linux]

Is this something that is still planned to be changed in 1.8 or will 1.8 
continue with the 1.6 behavior after all?

Phil