Rails link_to_remote rendering nothing, why?

RoR newbie here. Working the "play time" exercises at the end of Agile Web Dev with Rails, chapter 9. Can't get link_to_remote to generate a link for me in a partial. My store_cart_item.html.erb partial looks like this:

<% if cart_item == @current_item then %>
  <tr id="current_item">
<% else %>
  <tr>
<% end %>
  <td>
<!-- stuck here, trying to get a link to decrement the quantity, but it doesn't 
  even show a link, I also tried nesting a link_to in form_remote_tag which 
  at least displayed link but didn't call the remove_from_cart action -->
<% link_to_remote cart_item.quantity.to_s + "&times;",
                :update => "cart",
                :url => {:action => "remove_from_cart", :id => cart_item.product} %>
 </td>
 <td><%= h cart_item.title %></td>
 <td class="item-price"><%= number_to_currency(cart_item.pri开发者_运维百科ce) %></td>
</tr>

In the browser, link_to_remote appears to be doing nothing, b/c the html output looks like this:

<tr> 
  <td> 
  <!-- stuck here, trying to get a stupid link to decrement the quantity, doesn't even show link
  also tried nesting it in form_remote_tag which at least displayed link but didn't call the
  remove_from_cart action -->   
 </td> 
 <td>Agile Web Development with Rails</td> 
 <td class="item-price">$68.85</td> 
</tr> 

Feels like I am missing something really obvious. What am I doing wrong?

Expression under the tag <% exp %> are just evaluated, not assign the value.

And If you want to use or display the value of expression just use "=" sign like

<%= exp %>

Just change You code to

<%= link_to_remote cart_item.quantity.to_s + "&times;",
                :update => "cart",
                :url => {:action => "remove_from_cart", :id => cart_item.product} %>

Use <%= link_to_remote ... %> instead of <% link_to_remote %> (assuming you are using rails 2.x or previous versions).