.htaccess and includes

I'm looking for some information on .htaccess. I don't know much about them but what I'd like to do is protect my include directories from being viewed by users. I know that you can use .htaccess files to control access on a directory basis.

Thank you

FilesMatch approach might work with you have a particular extension for those files (i.e. .inc) -> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#filesmatch

Example:

<FilesMatch "\.inc$">
Order deny, allow
Deny from All
</FilesMatch>

You can also use LocationMatch -> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/co...l#locationmatch

Example:

<LocationMatch "^/include">
Order deny, allow
Deny from All
</LocationMatch>

Note, all these deny access on client side, like accessing it thru browser. include for SSI is done on server side. That said, it wouldn't deny your html page itself trying to include files (on the server side).