ASP in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Preprocessing Directives: Comments/Troubleshooting

The space between the @ character and the directive and the requirement that directives be placed on the first line of a script are syntactically the most important features of an ASP directive. The failure to include the space or to include directives on the first line of a script are the most common errors when using directives.

You may ask yourself how you can have more than one directive in a script if directives, with the exception of <%= expression %>, must be placed on the first line of a script. To include more than one directive, use the following syntax:

<%@ DIRECTIVE1=ValueDIRECTIVE2=Value %>

You must include at least one space between each directive. Also, you must not place spaces around the equal signs (=).