FileList

FileLists, like FileSets, are collections of files; however, a FileList is an explicitly defined list of files -- and the files don't necessarily have to exist on the filesystem.

Besides being able to refer to nonexistent files, another thing that FileLists allow you to do is specify files in a certain order. Files in FileSets are ordered based on the OS-level directory listing functions, in some cases you may want to specify a list of files to be processed in a certain order -- e.g. when concatenating files using the <append> task.

<filelist dir="base/" files="file1.txt,file2.txt,file3.txt"/>

<!-- OR: -->
<filelist dir="basedir/" listfile="files_to_process.txt"/>