> Sorry - that was ambiguous. I meant is was confused about the use of > the variable __this__. @__this__ is the this pointer from C++ - so my solution is way to complicated - I could have replaced @__this__ with a simple self (which I thought would not work because it should have been there implicitly). The whole problem is matter of parsing rules in Ruby - with a little syntactic help Ruby is going to do the right thing anyway class A attr_accessor :sym def try self.sym = "works" end end a = A.new a.try p a.sym # works which renders my complain mood in the first place. Christoph