first off -
thanks a ton. it is quite easier to read. i'm the posterchild for premature optimization. i don't know why i do it. i just figured with something so short, it made sense to not bother using semantic scalars. i was clearly very wrong.

anyways, the comment in the function was wrong, because that was from a different iteration - and i never updated things. the leading & is there purely as a visual cue - it just seems easlier looking at that as i scan the lines than looking all the way to the right to see if im calling 'new' in an oop instantiation.