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<h2><a name="property">Property</a></h2>
<h3>Description</h3>
<p>Sets a property (by name and value), or set of properties (from file or
resource) in the project.</p>
<p>When a property was set by the user, or was a property in a parent project
(that started this project with the <a href="ant.html">ant task</a>), then this
property cannot be set, and will be ignored. This means that properties set
outside the current project always override the properties of the current
project.</p>
<p>There are five ways to set properties:</p>
<ul>
  <li>By supplying both the <i>name</i> and <i>value</i> attribute.</li>
  <li>By supplying both the <i>name</i> and <i>refid</i> attribute.</li>
  <li>By setting the <i>file</i> attribute with the filename of the property
    file to load. This property file has the format as defined by the file used
    in the class java.util.Properties.</li>
  <li>By setting the <i>resource</i> attribute with the resource name of the
    property file to load. This property file has the format as defined by the
    file used in the class java.util.Properties.</li>
  <li>By setting the <i>environment</i> attribute with a prefix to use.
    Properties will be defined for every environment variable by
    prefixing the supplied name and a period to the name of the variable.</li>
</ul>
<p>Although combinations of the three ways are possible, only one should be used
at a time. Problems might occur with the order in which properties are set, for
instance.</p>
<p>The value part of the properties being set, might contain references to other
properties. These references are resolved at the time these properties are set.
This also holds for properties loaded from a property file.</p>
<h3>Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0">
  <tr>
    <td valign="top"><b>Attribute</b></td>
    <td valign="top"><b>Description</b></td>
    <td align="center" valign="top"><b>Required</b></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">name</td>
    <td valign="top">the name of the property to set.</td>
    <td valign="top" align="center">Yes</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">value</td>
    <td valign="top">the value of the property.</td>
    <td valign="middle" align="center" rowspan="6">Yes</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">refid</td>
    <td valign="top"><a href="../using.html#references">Reference</a> to an object
      defined elsewhere. Only yields reasonable results for references
      to <a href="../using.html#path">PATH like structures</a> or properties.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">resource</td>
    <td valign="top">the resource name of the property file.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">file</td>
    <td valign="top">the filename of the property file .</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">location</td>
    <td valign="top">Sets the property to the absolute filename of the
      given file. If the value of this attribute is an absolute path, it
      is left unchanged (with / and \ characters converted to the
      current platforms conventions). Otherwise it is taken as a path
      relative to the project's basedir and expanded.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">environment</td>
    <td valign="top">the prefix to use when retrieving environment variables. Thus
    if you specify environment=&quot;myenv&quot; you will be able to access OS-specific 
    environment variables via property names &quot;myenv.PATH&quot; or 
	&quot;myenv.TERM&quot;. Note that if you supply a property name with a final 
	&quot;.&quot; it will not be doubled. ie environment=&quot;myenv.&quot; will still 
	allow access of environment variables through &quot;myenv.PATH&quot; and 
	&quot;myenv.TERM&quot;. This functionality is currently only implemented 
    on select platforms. Feel free to send patches to increase the number of platforms
    this functionality is supported on ;)</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">classpath</td> 
    <td valign="top">the classpath to use when looking up a resource.</td>
    <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td valign="top">classpathref</td> 
    <td valign="top">the classpath to use when looking up a resource,
      given as <a href="../using.html#references">reference</a> to a PATH defined
      elsewhere..</td>
    <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
  </tr>
</table>
<h3>Parameters specified as nested elements</h3>
<h4>classpath</h4>
<p><code>Property</code>'s <i>classpath</i> attribute is a <a
href="../using.html#path">PATH like structure</a> and can also be set via a nested
<i>classpath</i> element.</p>
<h3>Examples</h3>
<pre>  &lt;property name=&quot;foo.dist&quot; value=&quot;dist&quot;/&gt;</pre>
<p>sets the property <code>foo.dist</code> to the value &quot;dist&quot;.</p>
<pre>  &lt;property file=&quot;foo.properties&quot;/&gt;</pre>
<p>reads a set of properties from a file called &quot;foo.properties&quot;.</p>
<pre>  &lt;property resource=&quot;foo.properties&quot;/&gt;</pre>
<p>reads a set of properties from a resource called &quot;foo.properties&quot;.</p>
<p>Note that you can reference a global properties file for all of your Ant
builds using the following:</p>
<pre>  &lt;property file=&quot;${user.home}/.ant-global.properties&quot;/&gt;</pre>
<p>since the &quot;user.home&quot; property is defined by the Java virtual machine
to be your home directory.  This technique is more appropriate for Unix than 
Windows since the notion of a home directory doesn't exist on Windows.  On the
JVM that I tested, the home directory on Windows is &quot;C:\&quot;.  Different JVM
implementations may use other values for the home directory on Windows.</p>
<hr>
<p align="center">Copyright &copy; 2000,2001 Apache Software Foundation. All rights
Reserved.</p>

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