include into var - scope problem

Wow, thats ob_ functions are great! I never used it before! That's my option. Eval() works fine too but to parse the files I need to put ending php tag in the start and starting php tag in the end. Yuck! Now I need to do this include thing a lot of times in some pages of the site. If I create a function to do that and set some variables (used in the include file) before calling the function these will not be available because the local scope of function. But I can't define global $var in function cause I don't know how many and which variables are needed by the include file. There's any way to do that, do a generic function, something like sending all the local variables to the function? function parse_fileread ($file) { ob_start(); include($file); $buffer = ob_get_contents(); ob_end_clean(); return $buffer; } Regards, Carlos > But for this work the content in "file.php" needs to be something like: > > > > return "<table > > border=1>...<b><?=$varone;?></b>...</table>"; > > > > How can I do the same thing without placing all the file into a > > return() statement? > > > > Regards, > > Carlos > > Two options: you'd either need to suck the code into a string and run > eval() on it, or use the output buffering functions to trap output to > a variable for the duration of the inclusion: something like this: > > <?php > error_reporting(E_ALL); > > ob_start(); > include('test.html'); > $included_file = ob_get_contents(); > > /* Next line gets output buffer contents & clears buffer. */ > ob_end_clean(); > > echo "Got this text from the included file:\n" . > htmlspecialchars($included_file); > > ?>