#21 add "append" semantics for output

[Ralf Hauser]

Daniel,

I'm back.
Obviously, I could do that with a shell script
cat output1 >> output0,
but I'd rather not.
In ant, there appears to be
http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTasks/concat.html, but
best would be if it were just available as an option in
fmpp!

Rgds Ralf

[Dániel Dékány]

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What should it do exactly? Do you want to continure all output
files rather than replacing them? (The maybe you use FMPP in
singe-file mode.)

[Ralf Hauser]

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yes I am using single file mode. I would like to be able to do
<fmpp sourcefile="i1" outputfile="o" ...
<fmpp sourcefile="i1" outputfile="o" append="true" ...

and that being equivalent to
<fmpp sourcefile="i1" outputfile="o1" ...
<fmpp sourcefile="i1" outputfile="o2"
mv o1 o
cat o2 >> o

Is it possible that in
http://fmpp.sourceforge.net/settings.html#key_sources there
is a typo?
Shouldn't <<If you use the outputFile setting, then FMPP
switches to single file mode. In this mode, it will process
only 1 files, and store its output in the file specified by
the outputFile setting. You must use sources, and it must
list exactly 1 file>> rather be <<If you use the outputFile
setting, then FMPP switches to single file mode. In this
mode, it will process only 1 files, and store its output in
the file specified by the outputFile setting. You should use
sourcefile or sources must contain exactly 1 file>>

[Dániel Dékány]

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Is this a problem if I don't add this "appendOutput" setting? I
think that it is needed very very rarely, and even then can be
solved with copy, cat, etc. I don't like to add such extreme
settings, as with this logic the number of settings would
increase rapidly, confusing and frighten users, confusing me :),
etc. so it doesn't worst it.

As of the documentation note: "sourceFile" is not a setting,
but an Ant task specific stuff... there is some confusion
regarding this. I will look into this.

[Ralf Hauser]

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since even I myself outlined work-arounds, it is certainly
not a show-stopper. But I do not agree with you that append
semantics are needed "very very rarely" - I see that used
quite often!
Also, I would be surprised if that raises compexity of both
your code and user documentation significantly.