[Zope] headache

Arrggh. I'm stuck on somthing really simple here. I have the following statements in a method: <dtml-call "REQUEST.set('periodsplit', _.str(period).split('-'))"> <dtml-call "REQUEST.set('dateYear', _.int(periodsplit[0]))"> If I set the var 'period' and view it directly it works just fine (period is in the format 2002-5), but if I call it from another object (methodname(_.None, _, period='2002-11')) it errors with: global name 'periodsplit' is not defined and the error points to the second call there. How can it not be defined? I just set it?!!? Is REQUEST.set not pushing those onto the namespace when called from another object? I've never had this problem before. TIA Rick