to be honest, I hardly use ='s for var, and it works just as good, at least for me it does, I tested your script and it worked fine, can you show what you are typing?
In most cases, you can get away with not using = in a /var, but there are specific cases that will not work if you don't include the = sign. It is *always* a good idea to follow correct syntax rather than using shortcuts, or you end up running into unexpected problems that are hard to track down.
Of course, considering all of that is on a single line rather than *nicely* spaced out over multiple lines, it will already be harder to track down problems than it would otherwise.
