From: Phillip Hutchings <sitharus@...>
Date: 2006-07-08T16:51:55+09:00
Subject: Re: storing and using references to variables

On 7/8/06, Russell Fulton <r.fulton@auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> Hi,
>    I want to store a reference to a scalar variable (in perl parlance)
> in another variable and then assign a value to the stored variable.

In Ruby all variables are references to an object, there is no way to
make a reference to a reference. If you want to make a change to a
string that's referred to by two objects use the in-place operators,
they normally are suffixed with an !.

eg:

foo = 'bar'
baz = foo
baz = baz.gsub('bar','foo')
puts [baz, foo].join('-')
=> foo-bar

vs

foo = 'bar'
baz = foo
baz.gsub!('bar','foo')
puts [baz, foo].join('-')
=> foo-foo

If this isn't appropriate you'll have to use a container as you are at
the moment.
-- 
Phillip Hutchings
http://www.sitharus.com/