Question

There are two folders A and B. I need to copy different files between A and B to a third folder C. How can I do it? There is a difference collection in ant, but how to use it in copy? Thanks for any idea.

Answer 1

Following ANT script will only copy those files not present in both directories:

<project name="copy" default="copy-files">

    <target name="copy-files">
        <copy todir="C" verbose="true" overwrite="true">
            <fileset dir="A">
                <present present="srconly" targetdir="B"/>
            </fileset>
            <fileset dir="B">
                <present present="srconly" targetdir="A"/>
            </fileset>
        </copy>
    </target>

</project>

Test setup:

$ tree
.
|-- A
|   |-- one
|   |-- shared
|   `-- two
|-- B
|   |-- four
|   |-- shared
|   `-- three
`-- build.xml

Running the build demonstrates that the files called “shared” are not copied:

$ ant
Buildfile: build.xml

copy-files:
     [copy] Copying 4 files to C
     [copy] Copying A/one to C/one
     [copy] Copying A/two to C/two
     [copy] Copying B/four to four
     [copy] Copying B/three to three

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 0 seconds