From: Gavin Kistner <gavin.kistner@...>
Date: 2006-11-03T06:16:43+09:00
Subject: Re: str1 = str2 is not a copy?!?

From: Joe Ruby MUDCRAP-CE
[snip]
> WHY is var line getting changed by operations on var base_name? Isn't 
> 'base_name = line' supposed to create a copy? '=' in this 
> case seems to be acting like an alias or something.

Variables point to objects, they do not "hold" or "contain" them.

What you are suggesting is that:
  me = Person.new
would create a new Person object, and then duplicate it before assigning
to 'me', or that:
  my_really_long_array_name = [ 1, 2, 3 ]
  short_name = my_really_long_array_name
would result in two different copies of the array.

That's the opposite of how it works :)