>I understand you're fairly new to Ruby, AW, but I must give you some guidance
>here.  As cool as <<puts "#{' ' * i}*">> is, the main point of Paul's program
>was the iterator.  The fact that his method "up_and_down" simply counts up and
>down, and is completely independent of what is being done with that count.
>That is good design, and highlights Ruby as a good language.
>
>I think you should thank Paul for imparting that lesson ;)
>
>Cheers,
>Gavin
>

Of course!.
I want to thank *everybody* who responded. 
Everybody's code examples have given me a lot to think about.
Being able to see the way other people use ruby to express the same
result helps me learn to do things the ruby way and not write like im
using Pascal with a diff syntax. I dont want to get get stuck treating
ruby just another scriptig language with lots of handy polymophic
methods built in, Its more than that. 

Aaron.