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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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