In Ant, how do I specify files with comma in filename?

Question

Here is an example-target that I tried. Turns out, it wants to delete everything because the comma separates "**/*" and "cover" -- understandable.

<target name="clean">
    <delete
        verbose="true">
        <fileset dir="." includes="**/*.pyo"></fileset>
        <fileset dir="." includes="**/*,cover"></fileset>
    </delete>
</target>

How do I specify an embedded comma?

I'm trying to learn Ant so I won't have to maintain different build-systems for different operating-systems. In this case, it's in a Python environment, where *,cover files are created by a code-coverage checking tool called Coverage.

Yes, I did. I also just tried Sheryl's suggestion with two backslashes, but that didn't help either. — Harry Pehkonen, Mar 14 '13 at 22:03

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 14 '13 at 21:01

You don't need to escape this. Just use <include/> instead of includes arg. Try this:

<project name="test" default="clean">

    <dirname property="build.dir" file="${ant.file.test}" />

    <target name="clean">
        <delete>
            <fileset dir="${build.dir}/test">
                <include name="**/*,*.xml" />
            </fileset>
        </delete>
    </target>

</project>

By the way. You shouldn't use . (dot) in you dir argument. If you want to delete files in directory where you have got build.xml file you should pass absolute path (to do this you can use <dirname/> like in my example). If you will use . then you will have problems with nested build. Let's imageine that you have got two builds which delete files but first build also call second build:

maindir/build1.xml

<delete dir="." includes="**/*.txt" />
<!-- call clean target from build2.xml -->
<ant file="./subdir/build2.xml" target="clean"/>

maindir/subdir/build2.xml

<delete dir="." includes="**/*.txt" />

In this case build2.xml won't delete *.txt files in subdir but *.txt files in maindir because ant properties will be passed to build2.xml. Of course you can use inheritAll="false" to omit this but from my experience I know that using . in paths will bring you a lot of problems.

That worked! `` did the trick! Good point about dir="." -- I will change it. Thanks very much! — Harry Pehkonen, Mar 14 '13 at 22:06

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 20:48

Unless you have other files with names that end in cover that you don't want to delete, just leave the comma out:

<fileset dir="." includes="**/*cover"></fileset>

If you do have other files that end in cover that you don't want deleted, try the backslash suggestion from MattDMo's comment. You may have to double-backslash it ("**/*\\,cover").

Another possibility: Can you configure Coverage to put its output in another directory, so you can just delete the whole directory? Or can you configure it to use a different output filename so you don't have this problem? I'm not familiar with Coverage, but looking at the link you provided, it looks like the data_file option might do one or both of those things.

I took the comma out for now as an interim solution (two backslashes didn't seem to make any difference). Thanks for the idea. — Harry Pehkonen, Mar 14 '13 at 22:04

In Ant, how do I specify files with comma in filename?

2 Answers2

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