Converting an Ant fileset to multiple apply args

ant, arguments, fileset

Solution

Here's an example illustrating the use of the pathconvert task.

The converted path is passed to the executable using `<arg line />`.

This assumes no spaces in the paths of your `*.txt` files.

<target name="atask">
    <fileset dir="dir" id="myTxts">
        <include name="*.txt" />
    </fileset>
    <pathconvert property="cmdTxts" refid="myTxts" pathsep=" " />

    <apply executable="${cmd}" parallel="false" verbose="true">
        <arg value="-in" />
        <srcfile />
        <arg line="${cmdTxts}" />

        <fileset dir="${list.dir}" includes="*.list" />
    </apply>
</target>

If you might encounter spaces this should do: as above, but change (hopefully obvious which lines) to:

    <pathconvert property="cmdTxts" refid="myTxts" pathsep="' '" />

and

        <arg line="'${cmdTxts}'"/>

Problem

I have some files: ``` dir/foo.txt dir/bar.txt dir/foobar.txt ``` In an Ant `apply` task, I want to pass the list of files as arguments: ``` <target name="atask"> <apply executable="${cmd}" parallel="false" verbose="true"> <arg value="-in"/> <srcfile/> <arg value="dir/foo.txt"/> <arg value="dir/bar.txt"/> <arg value="dir/foobar.txt"/> <fileset dir="${list.dir}" includes="*.list"/> </apply> </target> ``` This works fine, but what if I want to pick the list of files dynamically, using a fileset: ``` <fileset dir="dir" includes="*.txt"/> ``` How can I convert this fileset to `arg` elements - one per file? Something like: ``` <arg> <fileset dir="dir" includes="*.txt"/> </arg> ``` instead of ``` <arg value="dir/foo.txt"/> <arg value="dir/bar.txt"/> <arg value="dir/foobar.txt"/> ``` (This example doesn't work because arg doesn't support fileset)

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