How to avoid repeatedly calling include()?

[greg_plowman]

@mauro3

I remember that I thought as well that include just copy-pastes. This misunderstanding does come up repeatedly on this forum. Probably calling it eval_file or something alike would have been clearer.

Agreed. I had exactly this thought some time ago …

Include mystery

I must confess to being tripped up by misunderstanding exactly what include does. Indeed, I think it is a common misconception. I can’t help but feel that it is partly due to the name include which might be associated with pre-processor directives in other languages. And it is commonly used for the same or similar functionality. For me the name eval_file would help remind me that it is a normal function executed at run time and which evals the contents of the file (in global scope since it is…