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# INCLUDE

When this directive is encountered parsing switches to the included file immediately. As a result the included file can be comprised of any valid mapfile syntax. For example:

    INCLUDE 'myLayer.map'

Performance does not seem to be seriously impacted with limited use, however in high performance instances you may want to use includes in a pre-processing step to build a production mapfile. The C pre-processor can also be used (albeit with a different syntax) and is far more powerful.

## Notes

- Supported in versions 4.10 and higher.

- The name of the file to be included MUST be quoted (single or double quotes).

- Includes may be nested, up to 5 deep.

- File location can be given as a full path to the file, or (in MapServer >= 4.10.1) as a path relative to the mapfile.

- Debugging can be problematic because:

  1. the file an error occurs in does not get output to the user

  2. the line number counter is not reset for each file. Here is one possible error that is thrown when the include file cannot be found:

         msyylex(): Unable to access file. Error opening included file "parks_include.map"

## Example

    MAP
     NAME "include_mapfile"
     EXTENT 0 0 500 500
     SIZE 250 250

     INCLUDE "test_include_symbols.map"
     INCLUDE "test_include_layer.map"
    END

where test_include_symbols.map contains:

    SYMBOL
       NAME 'square'
       TYPE VECTOR
       FILLED TRUE
       POINTS 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 END
    END

and test_include_layer.map contains:

    LAYER
      TYPE POINT
      STATUS DEFAULT
      FEATURE
        POINTS 10 10 40 20 300 300 400 10 10 400 END
      END
      CLASS
        NAME 'Church'
        COLOR 0 0 0
        SYMBOL 'square'
        SIZE 7
        STYLE
          SYMBOL "square"
          SIZE 5
          COLOR 255 255 255
        END
        STYLE
          SYMBOL "square"
          SIZE 3
          COLOR 0 0 255
        END
      END
    END