glossaries package FAQ

Why shouldn’t I use \include to include my glossary definitions? 🔗

Suppose you’ve defined all your glossary entries in a file called glossary-defs.tex and you want to use some or all of these entries in your document. The glossaries user guide says that you can use:

\loadglsentries[type]{filename}

to load the file. For example:

\loadglsentries{glossary-defs}

You can also use \input{filename} (e.g., \input{glossary-defs}) but you shouldn’t use \include{filename}, despite the number of web pages that suggest you can or should.

Although both \input and \include make TeX read the named file, these two commands aren’t equivalent. The first, \input, acts as though the contents of the file were written directly in your document in place of the \input command. The other one, \include, does a lot more than this. The command \include{file}:

checks the include hasn’t been nested (\include can’t be in a file that has been loaded with \include);
issues a \clearpage;
writes a line to the main .aux file;
checks if the file should be included or excluded. (See \includeonly and \excludeonly). If it should be included, then \include:
- creates an associated .aux file that’s used instead of the main .aux file while the included contents are being read;
- reads the included file;
- issues another \clearpage;
sets the values of various counters.

Therefore, if you want to just input the contents of a file, \include is far less efficient than \input, can cause a spurious page break and creates a redundant extra file. So always use either \input or \loadglsentries to load your glossary definitions and only do this in the preamble.

2020-07-01 12:45:42

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Category: glossaries package
Topic: Defining Terms