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Path-like Structures

You can specify PATH- and CLASSPATH-type references using both ":" and ";" as separator characters. Ant will convert the separator to the correct character of the current operating system.

Wherever path-like values need to be specified, a nested element can be used. This takes the general form of:

    <classpath>
      <pathelement path="${classpath}"/>
      <pathelement location="lib/helper.jar"/>
    </classpath>

The location attribute specifies a single file or directory relative to the project's base directory (or an absolute filename), while the path attribute accepts colon- or semicolon-separated lists of locations. The path attribute is intended to be used with predefined paths - in any other case, multiple elements with location attributes should be preferred.

As a shortcut, the <classpath> tag supports path and location attributes of its own, so:

    <classpath>
      <pathelement path="${classpath}"/>
    </classpath>
can be abbreviated to:
    <classpath path="${classpath}"/>

In addition, DirSets, FileSets, and FileLists can be specified via nested <dirset>, <fileset>, and <filelist> elements, respectively. Note: The order in which the files building up a FileSet are added to the path-like structure is not defined.

    <classpath>
      <pathelement path="${classpath}"/>
      <fileset dir="lib">
        <include name="**/*.jar"/>
      </fileset>
      <pathelement location="classes"/>
      <dirset dir="${build.dir}">
        <include name="apps/**/classes"/>
        <exclude name="apps/**/*Test*"/>
      </dirset>
      <filelist refid="third-party_jars">
    </classpath>

This builds a path that holds the value of ${classpath}, followed by all jar files in the lib directory, the classes directory, all directories named classes under the apps subdirectory of ${build.dir}, except those that have the text Test in their name, and the files specified in the referenced FileList.

If you want to use the same path-like structure for several tasks, you can define them with a <path> element at the same level as targets, and reference them via their id attribute - see References for an example.

A path-like structure can include a reference to another path-like structure via nested <path> elements:

    <path id="base.path">
      <pathelement path="${classpath}"/>
      <fileset dir="lib">
        <include name="**/*.jar"/>
      </fileset>
      <pathelement location="classes"/>
    </path>

    <path id="tests.path">
      <path refid="base.path"/>
      <pathelement location="testclasses"/>
    </path>

The shortcuts previously mentioned for <classpath> are also valid for <path>. For example:

    <path id="base.path">
      <pathelement path="${classpath}"/>
    </path>
can be written as:
    <path id="base.path" path="${classpath}"/>


next up previous contents index
Next: Command-line Arguments Up: Using Ant Previous: Token Filters   Contents   Index
Andrew Marlow 2003-07-08