From: gedb@... (Ged) Date: 2004-02-09T10:33:26+09:00 Subject: Re: principle of most suprise tony summerfelt wrote in message news:... [...] > > i seem to be getting hung up on the simplest things. i'm using > 'ruby in a nutshell' and 'programming ruby' as my references. Remember to use 'p variable' to see what your object actually contains. This makes it much easy to solve this type of problem. One of the hardest thing with Ruby is realising all the stuff you don't have to do. In a language like Java or VB you are always having to keep the type at the front of your mind and proceed with caution. With Ruby you have to learn some laziness.