I've put the following Ruby program in de cgi-bin directory of my 
Apache/mod_Ruby web server:

--------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/ruby

dira = ENV['DOCUMENT_ROOT']
dirb = '/home/httpd'
puts 'dira and dirb are equal!' if dira == dirb
d = Dir.new(dirb)
--------------------------------------------------

When I execute it, I get the following output:

--------------------------------------------------
dira and dirb are equal!
--------------------------------------------------

Which was expected because my ENV['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is indeed '/home/httpd'

However, when I change the last line to:

--------------------------------------------------
d = Dir.new(dira)
--------------------------------------------------

I get:

--------------------------------------------------
/home/httpd/cgi-bin/index.rb:6:in `initialize': Insecure operation - 
initialize (SecurityError)
	from /home/httpd/cgi-bin/index.rb:6:in `new'
	from /home/httpd/cgi-bin/index.rb:6
--------------------------------------------------

But dira is *exactly* the same string!
What on earth am I doing wrong?

TIA,

	Erik.