From: Patrick Li <patrickli_2001@...>
Date: 2008-08-15T11:09:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Use of dup to remove references

Ruby treats all variables as references to an object.
ie. if i say:
sentence = "my string"

you can think of it like this:
"my string" is stored as data somewhere in memory( let's say memory slot 
13)
then <sentence> will hold the value 13. (the memory location that 
contains it's data)

so if you say:
sentence_new = sentence

then it will assign the value 13 to <sentence_new>

so now both <sentence_new> and <sentence> refers to whatever is at 
memory slot 13.

so now it doesn't matter if you say:
sentence_new[open..close] = '' OR
sentence[open..close] = ''

they're both modifying the data at memory slot 13.

Hope that helps clear things up.
  -Patrick
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