These include, required, included_once, and required_once have always been "weird" to me because I rarely have had the need to use them directly. After watching this video I decided to play around with them and I realized my assumptions about how they work were wrong :)

I assumed that once we called required_once, or include_once with a given file if we call later require or include with the same file it wouldn't include it. I thought that the *_once functions had a "global" memory and that once they were used, the same file couldn't be required again, but it's not the case. These functions have a "local" scope. They verified if the given file has been included or not and based on that evaluate the file or not, however, they don't block the execution of other require or include functions.

You can play around with this code if you're curious :)

echo "1\n";
require_once "./index.view.php";
echo "2\n";
require "./index.view.php";
echo "3\n";
require_once "./index.view.php";
echo "4\n";
require_once "./index.view.php";
echo "5\n";
require "./index.view.php";

Separate Logic From the Template