On May 8, 7:15 pm, globalrev <skanem...@[...].se>  wrote:
>  puts "Input sentence:"
>  sentence = gets.split()
>  puts
> 
>  temp = sentence
>  phrase = sentence
>  puts ":", temp, sentence, phrase
> 
>  phrase[0] = temp[1]
>  puts "oink", phrase, temp
> 
>  when changing phrase[0] this will change temp as well and even
>  sentence! makes no sense and very surprising. how do i do what i want
>  to do?
> 
>  so basically ami messing with pointers here or what?

Essentially, yes, though I believe they are more commonly called
references (and not in that C++ sort of way).

When you do the assignment, phrase[0] = temp[1], you are simply making
the 0th item of the phrase array refer to the same object that the 1st
item of temp refers.

You need to throw in a `dup` call (duplicate) where appropriate. If
you want temp and phrase to be distinct from sentence, then change
those assignments to:

    temp = sentence.dup
    phrase = sentence.dup

If you wanted only phrase[0] to be distinct from temp[1], then:

    phrase[0] = temp[1].dup