OK, I looked over my original code, and came up with a better approach. Thanks for your suggestions, anyway.

I felt it needed to be a new instance as the classes involved are liable to get inherited, so the class of the two references might be different. I was kinda relying on them having the same internal representation if that happened.

I'm still curious as to whether this is possible. I might fiddle about a bit with globs, and I'll post an update if I get it working.

I'll save that rope for introducing Pain And Suffering ™ in another project. ;)