Question

I never quite understood this, since the name attribute appears to support spaces, but every example uses the harder to read period to name targets.

Why do this:

<target name="some.target.name">
<!-- target child nodes -->
</target>

When you can do this:

<target name="Some Target Name">
<!-- target child nodes -->
</target>

Was there some reason for this, or is it a technical constraint? The same goes for build properties. They’re always using some dot notation.

Answer 1

One reason might be that it’s easier to specify a build target on a command line if it doesn’t have spaces. With spaces, you’d have to put quotes around the whole target name.