salut Guy,

>  Use a library. Net::HTTP (in 'net/http') for http://... , Net::FTP (in
>  'net/ftp') for ftp://..., etc
>  You have examples in the documentation of these libraries.

thanks for your answer. I've found the library and the docs. but it only 
works when I "require" the whole library path to http.rb. I don't believe 
that's optimal:

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require("/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.6/net/http.rb")  # <- it works, but...
print "HTTP-Test 1:\n\n"
response, body = Net::HTTP.new.get('/index.html') # get from local server
print body,"\n";

what do I have to do to get rid of this long require statement?

When printing $:.each (the loadpath) it shows some several dirs. One of them, 
"/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.6", is the directory where the "Net"-directory is. But 
when I remove the require statement I get this error:

./http1.rb:7: uninitialized constant Net (NameError)

When I remove Net::, it says: 

./http1.rb:7: uninitialized constant HTTP (NameError)

and when I write "net::" it doesn't wort aswell... :-)

thanks for your help,
Tjabo.