From: Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@...>
Date: 2010-08-17T22:43:41+09:00
Subject: Re: HTTP Downloader

As an aside. Here's something to note when reporting errors.

I saved your script as a file called fred.rb and ran it:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `initialize': getaddrinfo:
nodename nor servname provided, or not known (SocketError)
	from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `open'
	from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
	from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:53:in `timeout'
	from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:93:in `timeout'
	from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
	from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:553:in `do_start'
	from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:542:in `start'
	from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:440:in `start'
	from fred.rb:12

The first line tells you what the problem is, however this is inside a
library function and is probably not where the problem lies. Note the
"from fred.rb: 12" at the bottom. That is where in your program the
error actually occurred and is what you want to know. It is the line
containing "Net::HTTP.start("#{site}") { |http|", which shows where
ruby is having a problem. Sometimes these stack traces can get very
long but the useful information tends to be at the top and bottom of
the output. It is useful to provide these parts of a stack trace (you
can trim out the middle if the trace is long) and the relevant lines
of code around where the problem occurs. Such as


    10	puts "The file will download into the directory this script is
placed in."
    11	
    12	Net::HTTP.start("#{site}") { |http|
    13	 resp = http.get("#{subURL}")
    14	 open("fun.jpg", "wb") { |file|

This will help people help you.