Question

I have three files and three directories in a directory, with varying dates.

$ cd mydir
$ ls -ltr
-rw-rw-r-- 1 skiphoppy users    0 Nov 14 00:00 file.old.20121114
drwxrwxrwx 2 skiphoppy users 4096 Nov 14 00:00 dir.old.20121114
drwxrwxrwx 2 skiphoppy users 4096 Dec  5 12:05 dir.old.20121205
drwxrwxrwx 2 skiphoppy users 4096 Dec  5 12:05 dir
-rw-rw-r-- 1 skiphoppy users    0 Dec  5 12:16 file.old.20121205
-rw-rw-r-- 1 skiphoppy users    0 Dec  5 12:16 file

I want to build a dirset that includes all directories older than 2012-12-01. If I am reading right, the selector can be used to limit the files returned. But it appears this doesn’t work for a dirset, even though the dirset documentation says you can use nested patternsets and selectors.

If I use the date selector on a fileset, I get just the one old file that I would expect; but with the same syntax on a dirset, I get all directories:

<fileset id="old.files" dir="mydir">
  <date datetime="12/01/2012 12:00 AM" when="before"/>
</fileset>
<echo message="Files: ${toString:old.files}"/>
<dirset id="old.dirs" dir="mydir">
  <date datetime="12/01/2012 12:00 AM" when="before"/>
</dirset>
<echo message="Dirs: ${toString:old.dirs}"/>

Output:

 [echo] Files: file.old.20121114
 [echo] Dirs: ;dir;dir.old.20121114;dir.old.20121205

What is going on here that the date selector does not work?

Answer 1

You probably need the checkdirs attribute set for the date selector. The default is ‘false’, i.e. select everything.

<date datetime="12/01/2012 12:00 AM" when="before" checkdirs="true" />