classitem variable substitution

[Charlton Purvis]

Hi, folks:

I poked around on the archives and couldn't find a post related to this.
I'm sure it's there, and I apologize for not laying my finger on it.

But is a variable substitution on a CLASSITEM not allowed?  Var. sub. works
fine elsewhere, just not here.

I am trying to hit a .shp and have the CLASSITEM be dependant on one of its
columns or whatever they're called in the .shp world.

Error . . .

msDBFGetItemIndex(): DBASE file error. Item '%TARGETTIME%' not found.

.map excerpt . . .

  LAYER
    NAME elevation
    PROJECTION
      "proj=latlong"
    END
    DATA
"/home/cpurvis/scoop/adcirc/SADCec95-UNC_WNAHNOPR-NCP_%STARTTIME%_20051017T1
300_20051022T1200_elev_ZGIS-ele"
    TYPE POLYGON
    STATUS DEFAULT
    CLASSITEM "%TARGETTIME%"
    CLASS
      STYLE END
      OUTLINECOLOR 0 0 0
    END
  END

I have tried playing around w/ single and double quotes, but no luck.

I'm used to PostGIS, and I could jolly well do this on the DATA line as an
alias, but staying w/i the shapefile world for this project is probably the
way to go.

Thanks!

Charlton