From: Mat Schaffer <schapht@...>
Date: 2006-05-26T23:57:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Questionable behavior

On May 26, 2006, at 9:54 AM, transfire@gmail.com wrote:

> I'm getting some very strange behavior from a conditional statement --
> I can;t imagine how it is happeneing and I wondering if I stumbled  
> upon
> some sort of bug in Ruby. Although I have no idea how it could even
> occuer, perhaps someone else can see it. Here's the code:
>
>   p pkg
>   p pkg.gem
>   p pkg.gem
>   if pkg.gem
>       p "HERE"
>       pkg = pkg.__merge__( pkg.gem )
>   end
>   p pkg
>
> This prints
>
>   #<OpenObject....>
>   nil
>   nil
>   nil
>
> Notice it does not print "HERE" yet by that last print pkg has somehow
> become nil! Note that I repeated 'p pkg.gem' to show that it has
> nothing to do with calling this statment. Now if I remark out the pkg
> assignment:
>
>   p pkg
>   p pkg.gem
>   p pkg.gem
>   if pkg.gem
>       p "HERE"
>       #pkg = pkg.__merge__( pkg.gem )
>   end
>   p pkg
>
> I get
>
>   #<OpenObject....>
>   nil
>   nil
>   #<OpenObject....>
>
> As it should be. How is this possible?

I'd be happy to test it here and see if I can replicate it.  But I  
don't know what an OpenObject is.
-Mat