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<title>Concat</title>
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<h2><a name="Concat">Concat</a></h2>
<h3>Description</h3>
<p>
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 <var>append</var> attribute may be
used to alter this behavior.
</p>
<p>
<a href="../CoreTypes/fileset.html">FileSet</a>s and/or <a
href="../CoreTypes/filelist.html">FileList</a>s 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.
</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">destfile</td>
<td valign="top">
The destination file for the concatenated stream.
If not specified the console will be used instead.
</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">
No
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">append</td>
<td valign="top">
Specifies whether or not the file specified by 'destfile'
should be overwritten. Defaults to "yes".
</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">encoding</td>
<td valign="top">
Specifies the encoding for the input files. Please see <a
href="http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/internat/encoding.doc.html">
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/internat/encoding.doc.html</a>
for a list of possible values. Defaults to the platform's
default character encoding.
</td>
<td valign="top" align="center">No</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3>Parameters specified as nested elements</h3>
<h4>fileset</h4>
<p>
<a href="../CoreTypes/fileset.html">FileSet</a>s are used to
select files to be concatenated. Note that the order in which
the files selected from a fileset are concatenated is
<i>not</i> guaranteed. If this is an issue, use multiple
filesets or consider using filelists.
</p>
<h4>filelist</h4>
<p>
<a href="../CoreTypes/filelist.html">FileList</a>s are used to
select files to be concatenated. The file ordering in the
<var>files</var> attribute will be the same order in which the
files are concatenated.
</p>
<h3>Examples</h3>
<p><b>Concatenate a string to a file:</b></p>
<pre>
<concat destfile="README">Hello, World!</concat>
</pre>
<p><b>Concatenate a series of files to the console:</b></p>
<pre>
<concat>
<fileset dir="messages" includes="*important*" />
</concat>
</pre>
<p><b>Concatenate a single file, appending if the destination file exists:</b></p>
<pre>
<concat destfile="NOTES" append="true">
<filelist dir="notes" files="note.txt" />
</concat>
</pre>
<p><b>Concatenate a series of files, overwriting if the
destination file exists:</b></p>
<pre>
<concat destfile="${docbook.dir}/all-sections.xml">
<filelist dir="${docbook.dir}/sections"
files="introduction.xml,overview.xml" />
<fileset dir="${docbook.dir}"
includes="sections/*.xml"
excludes="introduction.xml,overview.xml" />
</concat>
</pre>
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Copyright © 2002 Apache Software Foundation. All
Rights Reserved.
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