Property in propertyregex's regexp

Question

I would like to use a property instead of a hardcoded text in the "regexp" attributes of the "propertyregex" Ant contrib task.

How can I do it so that the property is substituted first rather than its text used as the regex itself?

Example:

var name="regexp" value="${placeholder.start}|${placeholder.end}" />
<propertyregex property="a" input="${a.raw}" regexp="${regexp}" replace="" global="true" override="true" />

Answer 1

You can use a <property> to pass the regular expression to the regexp attribute:

<property name="a.raw" value="~_one_~ two ~_three_~" />
<property name="placeholder.start" value="~_" />
<property name="placeholder.end" value="_~" />
<property name="regexp" value="${placeholder.start}|${placeholder.end}" />
<propertyregex
    input="${a.raw}"
    regexp="${regexp}"
    replace=""
    global="true"
    property="a" />
<echo>${a}</echo>

Output

[echo] one two three