Include Files

The include option is the heart of making efficient ASP files and re-usable chunks. It basically has two forms and now we will present the forms and their differences:

<!--#include virtual="/whatever.asp"-->
would include any file on your site (in this example, whatever.asp is in the web server's root directory) but you must fully qualify the filename with a path.

<!--#include file="whatever.asp"-->
can include the whatever.asp file in  the directory of the script that contains the statement. It ASSUMES the current directory!

Example #1
<!--#include virtual="/sally/filename.asp"-->
could include a file from sally's directory, even if the page with this statement is (for example) in the /fred/finance folder.

Example #2:
<!--#include file="/sally/filename.asp"-->
will fail from fred's directory.

Example #3:
<!--#include file="../sally/filename.asp"-->
will succed from fred's directory but if the script that contains it is moved to a different level in the tree structure it will fail to locate the file. INCLUDE VIRTUAL is better if a script may be moved and is immune to relative path issues.

IMPORTANT: Include files are always processed and inserted before ASP scripts on the page are calculated. Thus a page with many IFs and SELECT CASEs that selectively include files in fact always include the file before the script begins executing.

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