Which "empty directories" are being copied by ant? - ant

Question

On a project that uses ant as a build tool, I have the following simplified directory structure:
src/
com/
foo/
bar/
(some files)
bar2/
(some other files)
And the following simplified ant script:
<project default="all">
<target name="all">
<delete dir="dst"/>
<mkdir dir="dst"/>
<copy todir="dst">
<fileset dir="src" excludes="com/foo/bar/*"/>
</copy>
</target>
</project>
When I run this ant script, I see the following output:
all:
[delete] Deleting directory /home/grodriguez/workspace/_test/anttest/dst
[mkdir] Created dir: /home/grodriguez/workspace/_test/anttest/dst
[copy] Copying 1 file to /home/grodriguez/workspace/_test/anttest/dst
[copy] Copied 4 empty directories to 1 empty directory under /home/grodriguez/workspace/_test/anttest/dst
Question: Why is ant reporting that "4 empty directories" are being copied? Shouldn't that be 1 empty directory (com/foo/bar)?

Answer 1

Creating the directory com/foo/bar implies first creating com and then com/foo - i.e. three directories.
My version of Ant is slightly more verbose and shows each creation action:
$ ant -v
Apache Ant(TM) version 1.10.2 compiled on February 3 2018
... deleted for brevity ....
[mkdir] Created dir: /stack/ant/dst
[copy] com/foo/bar2/x.txt added as com/foo/bar2/x.txt doesn't exist.
[copy] omitted as /stack/ant/dst is up to date.
1 [copy] com added as com doesn't exist.
2 [copy] com/foo added as com/foo doesn't exist.
3 [copy] com/foo/bar added as com/foo/bar doesn't exist.
4 [copy] com/foo/bar2 added as com/foo/bar2 doesn't exist.
[copy] Copying 1 file to /stack/ant/dst
[copy] Copying /stack/ant/src/com/foo/bar2/x.txt to /stack/ant/dst/com/foo/bar2/x.txt
[copy] Copied 4 empty directories to 1 empty directory under /stack/ant/dst
When bar2 is created it is (obviously) empty and so gets included in the count of four, even though it is non-empty by the time the copy completes.