> From: Christoph [mailto:chr_news / gmx.net]
> 
> "Kent Dahl" <kentda / stud.ntnu.no> wrote in
> ....
> > >          [@a, @b].collect! { |iv| iv+=1 }
> >
> > This doesn't appear to change the values of @a and @b, 
> > which it seems like the OP wanted.
> 
> Okay what about
> 
>    def inc_iv
>          @a,@b = [@a,@b].collect! { |iv| iv+=1 }
>    end
> /Christoph

That's not bad and seems like the closest to what I was hoping to achieve.
Don't know why I didn't think to include this in my original post, but
here's the Perl for the situation that I was trying to express equally as
compactly in Ruby syntax:

$a = 1; $b = 2;
foreach $var (\$a, \$b) {
  $$var++;
}
print "$a $b\n"   # -> "2 3"

Thanks for all the suggestions,

  - jeff