In article <188189772248.20030220164246 / integ.ru>, bulatz / integ.ru 
says...
> these lines are very different. vars in ruby holds
> pointers to objects. array elements and class members
> also holds pointers. "=" operaion sets variable
> to point to object evaluated on the right
O.K., I didn't expect such a simple solution.
I had an association (Thinking C++) to operator= done on the var.
So, "h[5]=3" would assign a reference to an instance of Integer with the 
value 3, "e = h[5]" would assign this reference to e and finally,
in "e=7" e.operator=(7) would assign 7 to this reference.  
(Maybe this is not completely consistent.)
Instead, "=" is just an assignment.

Thank You,
Michael B.