------art_35547_103141.1153234388686
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

Hey folks,

Apologies if this is a very extreme utterly really nubie question, but I am
trying to learn Ruby and have run into a bit of a snag with a small program
that attempts to define a method with four variables.  The program fails
with the following error message:

zoom.rb:4:in `open': Connect failed (10000) z3950.loc.gov (RuntimeError)
:7090   from zoom.rb:4:in `zoomreturn'
        from zoom.rb:21

What's weird is that if I go through irb and type in the entire method def
and then supply it with four variables, the program works.  So I'm pretty
stymied.

The program is below.  Note that the "zoom" stuff I'm referring to in here
is a particular protocol that queries library catalogs.  The ruby module for
it is at http://ruby-zoom.rubyforge.org

If anyone wants to try it themselves to see, try using the following
variables for server, dbname, syntax, isbn:
z3950.loc.gov
Voyager
USMARC
0253333490

If it works correctly, the method should return a MARC record (basically, an
electronic library card) about a book on dinosaurs.

Thanks for taking a look,

jf.

----
require 'zoom'

def zoomreturn(server, dbname, syntax, isbn)
ZOOM::Connection.open(server, 7090) do |conn|
conn.database_name  bname
conn.preferred_record_syntax  yntax
rset  onn.search(isbn)
p rset [0]
end
end

puts "Server:"
server  ets
puts "dbname:"
dbname  ets
puts "Syntax:"
syntax  ets
puts "isbn:"
isbn  ets

zoomreturn(server, dbname, syntax, isbn)

------art_35547_103141.1153234388686--