Ant Developer’s Handbook

Exploring Ant Data Types

Let’s now move on to discuss the data types that Ant provides that aren’t exactly tasks. If you are used to data types in programming languages, these are quite a bit different, but they provide services that you’ll most certainly need. Specifically, we’ll discuss the following:

• Description type— Describes a project

• PatternSet— Groups of patterns

• DirSet— Groups of directories

• FileSet— Groups of files

• FileList— Explicit list of files

• FileMapper— Translates filenames

• FilterReader— Custom class that filters out files

• FilterChain— Series of FilterReaders to further filter files

• FilterSet— Groups of filters

• Selectors— Provides more control over file selection

• Class FileSet— A FileSet for class files

• Path-like structures ...