Concat

Description

Concatenates a file, or a series of files, to a single file or the console. The destination file will be created if it does not exist, though the the append attribute may be used to alter this behavior.

FileSets and/or FileLists are used to select which files are to be concatenated. There is no singular 'file' attribute to specify a single file to cat -- a fileset or filelist must also be used in these cases.

Parameters

Attribute	Description	Required
destfile	The destination file for the concatenated stream. If not specified the console will be used instead.	No,
append	Specifies whether or not the file specified by 'destfile' should be overwritten. Defaults to "yes".	No
encoding	Specifies the encoding for the input files. Please see http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/internat/encoding.doc.html for a list of possible values. Defaults to the platform's default character encoding.	No

Parameters specified as nested elements

fileset

FileSets are used to select files to be concatenated. Note that the order in which the files selected from a fileset are concatenated is not guaranteed. If this is an issue, use multiple filesets or consider using filelists.

filelist

FileLists are used to select files to be concatenated. The file ordering in the files attribute will be the same order in which the files are concatenated.

Examples

Concatenate a string to a file:

  <concat tofile="README">Hello, World!</concat>

Concatenate a series of files to the console:

  <concat>
    <fileset dir="messages" includes="*important*" />
  </concat>

Concatenate a single file, appending if the destination file exists:

  <concat tofile="NOTES" append="true">
    <filelist dir="notes" files="note.txt" />
  </concat>

Concatenate a series of files, overwriting if the destination file exists:

  <concat tofile="${docbook.dir}/all-sections.xml">
    <filelist dir="${docbook.dir}/sections" 
         files="introduction.xml,overview.xml" />
    <fileset dir="${docbook.dir}" 
         includes="sections/*.xml" 
         excludes="introduction.xml,overview.xml" />
  </concat>