Trouble getting dynamic values fed to my javascript

Say, I usually have .rhtml/eruby access to all my values, but I’m seeing
this
weird case, possibly because I’m using https instead of http (I cannot
think of
anything else) that doesn’t allow the values from <%= $x %> to be
utilized in
javascript methods. When I do the following:

<%
$x = $cgi[‘x’]
puts “trace $x: #{$x}”
%>

in the source view from the browser it always shows:

even though my logs show the line with “trace $x: value of x”.

What gives? Is this a known or unexpected behavior? Is there a way I
can get
around it?

I have tried it several ways, and I know I’m not mistaken.

Sincerely, Xeno

Xeno C. wrote:

eruby --version gives me:

eRuby version 1.0.5
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i486-linux]
----snip—

This is kindof a followup of my other email about javascript in my
.rhtml files
(eruby with https apache2). What I seem to be generally seeing is that
anything
that is not the initial behavior in eruby values that by necessity must
be set
outside any blocks in the early <% %> stanza.

If this is known stuff, forgive me. I just need a link, or perhaps a
recommendation to do it another way. I know AJAX goes in Rails, so it
must go
here too, right?