require?fread?fopen?

GOAL: I'd like to assign a big HTML contents (with PHP embedded) to a single variable so that I can send it as a MIME attachement by email. i.e. $my_var = <The whole HTML contents> PROBLEM: I tried saving the HTML+PHP codes into a file called "html_ver.inc", then read it with the following commands. $filename="./html_ver.inc"; $fp = fopen("$filename", "r"); $html_msg = fread($fp,filesize($filename)); fclose($fp); However, when I do "echo $html_msg" within the script, it only outputs the HTML codes but the PHP variables inside html_ver.inc doesn't show anything. Why? (It's too cumsy to assign the whole HTML+PHP contents directly to the variable $html_msg WITHIN the script... that's why I used the above method $html_msg .= "<html><head><title>$topic</title></head>\n"; $html_msg .= "<body>"; ... ) Thanks. Vboy