Pretty printing Java classpaths using Ant's pathconvert task

This is a blatent reproduction from a friend of mines blog Andrew Beacock for two reasons.

1. I can never find it.
2. A kind sole by the name of Remke provided a very nice enhancement using a macro

Here is the echopath macro

<!-- = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
macrodef: echopath
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = -->
<macrodef name="echopath">
    <attribute name="pathid" />
    <sequential>
    <property name="line.pathprefix" value="| |-- " />
    <!-- get given path in a printable form -->
    <pathconvert pathsep="${line.separator}${line.pathprefix}"
        property="echo.@{pathid}" refid="@{pathid}">
    </pathconvert>
    <echo>
Path @{pathid}
${line.pathprefix}${echo.@{pathid}}
    </echo>
    </sequential>
</macrodef>

Call the macro like this:

<path id="quick_test_classpath">
    <path refid="test.classpath" />
    <pathelement location="${instrumented.classes.dir.dev}"/>
    <pathelement location ="${classes.dir.dev}" />
    <pathelement location ="${test.config.dir.dev}" />
    <pathelement location ="${dfcommon.dir.dev}" />
</path>

<target name="display_my_classpath" >
    <echopath pathid="quick_test_classpath"/>
</target>

This will produce some output like:

[echo]
[echo] Path quick_test_classpath
[echo] | |-- C:\projects\foo\bar\test\lib\ant-junit.jar
[echo] | |-- C:\projects\foo\bar\test\lib\dbunit-2.3.0.jar
[echo] | |-- C:\projects\foo\bar\WebRoot\WEB-INF\lib\commons-beanutils.jar
[echo] | |-- C:\projects\foo\bar\WebRoot\WEB-INF\lib\commons-codec-1.3.jar
[echo] | |-- C:\projects\foo\bar\WebRoot\WEB-INF\lib\commons-collections-3.2.1.jar
[echo] | |-- C:\projects\foo\bar\WebRoot\WEB-INF\lib\commons-dbcp-1.2.1.jar
[echo]   

Andrew's original bog post can be found here