Ant script passing arguments to Batch file - ant

Question

I have an Ant script where I need to call a batch script as follows:
<exec dir="${basedir}\work_internal\${platform}" executable="cmd.exe">
<arg line ="/c example.bat 'C:\work_internal\${platform}' 'revn=120 SPECIAL_OBJS='a b''" />
I need to pass the arguments to example.bat, first argument is a directory and second argument is 'revn=120 SPECIAL_OBJS='a b'', with SPECIAL_OBJS='a b' where 'a b' must be in quotes. But when it calls to Bat script, it discards the quotes around 'a b' so in the second argument it is interpreted as revn=120 SPECIAL_OBJS= a b.
How can make it read like revn=120 SPECIAL_OBJS="a b"?

Answer 1

The single quotes don't pair up how you want them to, but you aught to be able to embed single quotes using the " entity - something like:
<arg line=" ... "revn=120 SPECIAL_OBJS='a b'"" />
For me ant -verbose for the above gives the below:
[exec] Executing 'cmd.exe' with arguments:
[exec] '/c'
[exec] 'example.bat'
[exec] 'C:\work_internal\${platform}'
[exec] 'revn=120 SPECIAL_OBJS='a z''
In your posted xml the quote pairs (v--v) are here:
<arg line="/c example.bat
v----------------------------v v----------------------v vv
'C:\work_internal\${platform}' 'revn=120 SPECIAL_OBJS='a b''" />
which doesn't look like what you intend, and the line is broken up incorrectly.
Another way to pass arguments to the batch script is using separate arg value= elements:
<exec dir="." executable="cmd.exe">
<arg value="/c" />
<arg value="example.bat" />
<arg value="C:\work_internal\${platform}" />
<arg value="revn=120 SPECIAL_OBJS='a b'" />
</exec>
rather than passing everything as a single line to the shell. That sidesteps the (shell) tokenization logic that is breaking the line up differently to how you wish.