Variable override in smarty fails (jtl plugin). Is there smarty caching? - smarty

Question

this is kind of a specific question but I am wondering if someone of you came across the same problem before.
What I am trying to do:
I am working on a jtl plugin.
To start off, the plugin should just run over the payments (the specific hook is active an works) and rename the description. Since I need to add more functionality later, all the stuff has to happen in the plugin (even though jquery would be easier for the former case).
In the shop system, the payments are set like this:
$smarty->assign('Zahlarten', $zahlarten);
In the plugin, I get all the payments like this:
$tmpPayments = $smarty->get_template_vars('Zahlarten');
I then loop over the array, doing specific changes. In the end, I want to add the payments back like:
$smarty->assign('Zahlarten', $tmpPayments');
And this is, what does not work. When I change the description and watch the variables in the phpstorm debugger, they are updated accordingly.
But after the page is loaded completely, the changes are not visible.
I know professional plugins that do it the exact way, and it works.
Changing the original array also does not help.
Also, deactivation caching does not work. Like this:
$smarty->assign('Zahlarten', $tmpPayments', true);
What works is:
$smarty->assign('Zahlarten_tmp', $tmpPayments');
But thats obviously not what I want, since I would have to change the template for that.
To wrap it up, it seams to me that there is some kind of caching going on which I can not figure out.
Does anyone has an idea or can point me to sources that might help?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I finally came across the answer (hours later :P).
Root of the problem:
Some system source code far away from my actual context made its own calculations, leading to another
$smarty->assign('Zahlarten', $farAwayCalcs);
,thus overriding my changes.
Never underestimate stepping through the code with your favorite debugger. ;)
Cheers!