From: rpardee@... (Roy Pardee)
Date: 2004-11-06T08:23:44+09:00
Subject: nuby sanity check--do I have a right to be confused by this error msg?

Hey All,

If I run this script (ruby 1.8.2 (2004-07-29) [i386-mswin32] on
win2k):

# ---------------------------------------
require "net/http"

PROXYSERVER = "proxy.ghc.org"
PROXYPORT   = 8080

my_array = ["rama", "lama", "ding"]

def someMethod
   Net::HTTP.Proxy(PROXYSERVER, PROXYPORT).start("www.ruby-doc.org")
do |http|
      my_array += ["dong"]
   end
end

puts my_array

someMethod
# ---------------------------------------

I get this for output:

C:\>ruby httperr.rb
rama
lama
ding
httperr.rb:12:in `someMethod': undefined method `+' for nil:NilClass
(NoMethodEr
ror)
        from httperr.rb:11:in `start'
        from c:/program files/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:324:in
`start'
        from httperr.rb:11:in `someMethod'
        from httperr.rb:18

Can anybody tell me why my backtrace seems to implicate http.rb?  I
was chasing my tail for quite a bit on that one.  (At one point I
figured there was just something wrong w/http.rb on windows & was
regex searching the backtrace for "http.rb:324" to see if I could
disregard the error.  Silly me.)

[And I'm still wondering why my_array is not visible inside
someMethod.  If I make the var name @my_array all is well, which is
also confusing since I'm not in a class def, so why should I need an
instance var...]

Thanks!

-Roy