Joe is finding that he's spending a lot of time writing Java software. Since all of his software is released using the license statement shown earlier, he'd like to be able to automatically include his license statement in each Java class. At first glance, it appears that the #include directive should allow him to do just that. He changes his Java class file as follows:

package com.javajoe.mypackage;

#include ( "gpl.vm" );    ## Joe's license file

import javax.swing.*;
/**
 * Class description goes here
 */
public class SomeClass extends Parent implements InterfaceList
{
	// Insert class variables here

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		// Main method
	}

	//Constructors
	public SomeClass() {
		super();
	}
	
	// Accessors & Mutators
	
	// Implementors
}

The #include directive takes as its parameter the name of the template file to be included. Upon running the new Java class template, the license statement is indeed included, but ends up looking like this:

#today ( $year "yyyy" )
/*
 * MyClass.java
 *
 * Copyright (c) ${year} Java Joe
 * Give my code a good home.
 */

"What gives?", ponders Joe. "It was resolving the date before". Joe consults the documentation and realizes that the #include directive is used to import static text, while the #parse directive will process the imported file as a template. Joe changes the first section of his class template to look like this:

package com.javajoe.mypackage;

#parse ( "gpl.vm" );    ## Joe's license file

import javax.swing.*;
## ... etc.

Now the license statement file gets processed as expected.