Comment 12 for bug 286567

New try.

In theory line can never be nil, it can be an empty string (i.e. "") but never nil (which would be nothing at all). I add a control strucutre to prevent an execution of gsub on line, when line is nil.
I am not too sure if this works though, in order to evaluate the variable the variable mustn't be nil (in theory again ;-)

Anyway, please give it a try.