Why does this asynchronous only affect the global variable when it is called as a function and not when it is explicitly written?

Question

var http=require('http');
var bl=require('bl');
var strs=[];
var finished=0;

for(var index=2; index<process.argv.length; index++)
{
    var url=process.argv[index];
    //makeRequest(url,index-2); --- This works.
    http.get(url,function (response)  //But if I do this inline, as opposed to making the request as a function, it goes to hell...why?
    {
        response.pipe
        (
            bl
            (
                function(err,data)
                {
                    if(err) throw err;
                    var thisResponse=data.toString();
                    strs[index-2]=thisResponse;  //this is not really happening...why?
                    finished++;
                    if(finished==3)
                    {
                        //it's getting here, but strs is unchanged from the beginning
                        printResults();
                    }
                }
            )
        );
    });
}


function makeRequest(url,index)
{
    http.get(url,function (response)
    {
        response.pipe
        (
            bl
            (
                function(err,data)
                {
                    if(err) throw err;
                    var thisResponse=data.toString();
                    strs[index]=thisResponse;
                    finished++;
                    if(finished==3)
                    {`enter code here`
                        printResults();
                    }
                }
            )
        );
    });
}


function printResults()
{
    for(var j=0; j<3; j++)
    {
        console.log(strs[j]);
    }
}

So I have this function to make an http.get request, and then throw the response in an array of strings. Now when I call the function, it works fine, but when I write the function out, (as seen below //makeRequest(url,index-2);), it doesn't affect the strs[ ] array, even though everything I'm doing is within the asynchronous flow (I think). Could somebody tell me why this is happening?