now this is inside a modified master.pike. The code has worked on
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
previous versions of pike. So not sure why it does not work now.
Ok, there's probably the cause of the problem. In Pike 7.4 and 7.6's default master.pike there's the following #define's:
#define write(X ...) _static_modules.files()->_stdout->write(X)
#define write(X ...) (Files()->_stdout->write(X))
(In Pike 7.7 the #define has been replaced with a variable).