Ant The <copy> type doesn't support nested text data (" ") issue

Question

Hi My ant build script snippest looks like this.

<copy todir="${warDir}/WEB-INF/classes">
    <fileset dir="${classdir}" includes="**/*.class" /> 
</copy>

I'm getting this error message when I execute ant against this build.xml

The <copy> type doesn't support nested text data (" ").

Can someone point out the issue I'm using fedora 16 and ant distribution 1.7.0

Answer 1

I figure out the issue. I

copied the content and pasted in the vim editor

, there were some garbage character due to encoding which was invisible. If whole content is typed in vim editor without copying it works fine.

Answer 2

It looks like this is due to the parser encountering a bad character. Inside the parenthesis at the end of the error, it tells you what the problem character is. I encountered the same problem, due to a bad copy-paste (a semicolon got introduced at the end of an element).

Answer 3

Can't reproduce your problem. Perhaps this error is being reported against a different copy task within your build?

ANT normally throws this error message, when you've incorrectly specified your ANT task.

For example:

    <copy> todir="${warDir}/WEB-INF/classes"
        <fileset dir="${classdir}" includes="**/*.class" />
    </copy>

ANT doesn't like this because the "todir" parameter is now within the body of the tag, instead of being specified as an XML attribute.