Ant Pattern Usage

Continua uses an Ant-like wildcard syntax in various Actions and workspace rules to find files.

The three wild cards are:

Character Behavior
** Matches any files in any directories
* Matches files in in a directory
? Matches a single character in a file/directory name

Examples

Example file system:

Output\Binaries\	App.exe	Installer.exe	Helpers\		setup.bat		cleanup.exeImages\	logo.png	Website\		connect.jpeg	App\		error.png		license.jpegSource\	App.cs	MoreCode.csServerApp.exe
Wildcard Example: **

To find all files ending in .exe you could use the pattern: Output\**.exe

It would return the following files:

Output\ServerApp.exe
Output\Binaries\App.exe
Output\Binaries\Installer.exe
Output\Binaries\Helpers\cleanup.exe
Wildcard Example: *

To find all .exe files in the Binaries directory and not in sub-directories you would use the pattern: Output\Binaries\*.exe

It would return the following files:

Output\Binaries\App.exe
Output\Binaries\Installer.exe
Wildcard Example: ?

To find all files in the Images directory that have a have file extension of 3 characters you would use the pattern: Output\Images\**.???

It would return the following files:

Output\Images\logo.png
Output\Images\App\error.png
Mixed Wildcard Example

To find all .exe files in any sub-directory of the Output directory you would use the pattern: Output\*\**.exe

It would return the following files:

Output\Binaries\App.exe
Output\Binaries\Installer.exe
Output\Binaries\Helpers\cleanup.exe

For more information on Ant patterns, see the official documentation at http://ant.apache.org/manual/dirtasks.html#patterns