On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 8:55 AM, Daniel Berger<djberg96 / gmail.com> wrote: > The rb_lastline_set() call sets $_. What's the equivalent in pure Ruby? If > it's possible to do within a C extension, it ought to be possible to do in > pure Ruby. It is not possible, which is why backref and lastline should be banned. $_ and $~ are treated specially and can only be set across calls from C code (or Java code in JRuby). - Charlie