what are <path..>, <fileset ..> ?

[Brendon Woodford]

Hi everybody ,

I am learning ANT and quite naturally I have some doubts. The one that is bothering me is-- What are <path id=""> and <fileset .. > are?
Are they ant Core Tasks? Or Optional tasks? But I have seen the list of ANT core as well as optional tasks but there is no such tasks.

I have understood there use. But to which category of ANT elements they belong, I 'm not too sure about.

Could anyone elaborate please.

Thank You.

[Tim Holloway]

They're not tasks at all. They're modifiers for tasks. Only the outermost elements in an Ant build.xml file are tasks (except when they're property definitions and the like). The nested stuff supplies the properties that the task processor will use to do its work.

[Peter Johnson]

I highly recommend that you bookmark the Ant manual.

<fileset ...> : http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTypes/fileset.html

<path ...>: http://ant.apache.org/manual/using.html#path

I also highly recommend Ant in Action. I have a prior edition of that book and found it invaluable.