Question

I am trying to log the output from cmd tree command using ant with the following:

    <exec dir="${basedir}" executable="cmd" output="output.txt">
        <arg value="tree" />
    </exec>

However, I am seeing the following in the “output.txt”:

    Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
    (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

When I run the command in the windows cmd:

    C:\tree>tree 

I get something like:

    C:\tree
        └───test
            └───test

Can anyone tell me how to write a Ant script to print the tree structure in to a file?

Answer 1

You try to execute tree.com. From the documentation of exec:

[…] In particular, if you do not put a
file extension on the executable, only
“.EXE” files are looked for, not
“.COM”, “.CMD” or other file types
listed in the environment variable
PATHEXT. That is only used by the
shell.

You need to call tree.com explicitely.

<exec dir="${basedir}" executable="tree.com" output="output.txt" />

---

Another way is to specify the /C parameter of cmd, that’s what worked for me:

<exec dir="${basedir}" executable="cmd" output="output.txt">
    <arg value="/C" />
    <arg value="tree" />
</exec>