From: Brian Ross <p.brian.ross@...>
Date: 2008-08-15T10:41:01+09:00
Subject: Use of dup to remove references

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Hello

I am new to ruby and looking for a brief explanation on why a code sample
works in an unexpected way.

# Beginning of code

def wipe_from( sentence )
  sentence_new = sentence
  while sentence_new.include? '('
    open = sentence_new.index( '(' )
    close = sentence_new.index( ')', open )
    sentence_new[open..close] = '' if close
  end
sentence_new
end

spoken = "I'm not happy with (nonsense) this moon."
test = wipe_from( spoken )

puts spoken
puts test


# End of code

I'd expect that the variable spoken would be unchanged because it's
sentence_new that's being modified. It works as expected if I use dup or
clone, but why is spoken being modified at all? Shouldn't it just be
returning the value of sentence_new?

Brian

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