Rainer,

You couldn't be more wrong about the lack of documentation of the non-use of the ${} notation in if / unless.

The section about targets DOES NOT say that you don't use the ${} notation for if / unless. It does say this, however:

'This is done by placing the property name between "${" and "}" in the attribute value.'

which leads you to believe that you need ${} notation wherever you need a property in an attribute, such as in if / unless.

How about helping your users out and making it clear that you don't use ${} notation with if / unless, in marked contrast to everywhere else in Ant.

Since if / unless are apparently the only place in Ant where you don't use ${} notation that fact should also be pointed out explicitly so people don't forget the ${} notation elsewhere.




Rainer Noack <rainer@(protected),

${} refers to the value of a property.
if / unless attributes refers to the existence (i.e. name) of a property.

IMHO, the different notation is reasonable.

However, this syntax and behaviour is pointed out explicitely in the manual:
->Using Ant->Targets

Cheers

Rainer

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Dean Schulze [mailto:dean_w_schulze@(protected)]
Gesendet: Samstag, 2. Februar 2008 16:15
An: dev@(protected)
Betreff: Need documentation change for if / unless


I filed this bug regarding the use of the if and unless attributes of
:

http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=44315

Matt Benson pointed out that the problem is that you don't use the ${}
notation when naming a property in an if or unless attribute. This is
confusing because everywhere else in Ant when you reference a property you
use the ${} notation.

The documentation for Targets doesn't mention this:

http://ant.apache.org/manual/using.html#targets

The fact that you don't use ${} notation for the if / unless attributes
needs be made explicit in the documentation.

Are there any other places where you use a property without using the ${}
notation? If so these also need to be made explicit. If the if / unless
attributes are the only place where this applies that should also be noted
in the documentation for if / unless.

Thanks.

Dean


   
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