Rob;

So sometimes you just have to ask "please" to get ChucK to do the right thing.

That's not quite the same. In your case here the "@" makes a difference between connecting and assigning in UGens (which I take "noisemaker" to refer to). that's quite different from the distinction between;

return my_instance;

and;

return my_instance @ new My_type;

...or some such construction just to make a function parse. I think I saw this happen fairly literally but I'd have to dig up the details.

I suspect that in many case this has to do with constructs like arrays not always properly preserving the type in every context while a assignment here and there puts the parser (and at times VM) "back on track".

I do believe this to be different but maybe I misunderstood your example.

Kas.