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<title>Local Task</title>
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<h2>Local</h2>
<p><em>Since Ant 1.8</em></p>
<h3>Description</h3>
<p>Adds a local property to the current scope. Property scopes exist at Apache Ant's various "block"
levels. These include targets as well as the <a href="parallel.html">Parallel</a>
and <a href="sequential.html">Sequential</a> task containers
(including <a href="macrodef.html">Macrodef</a> bodies). A local property at a given scope "shadows"
properties of the same name at higher scopes, including the global scope. Note that using
the <code>Local</code> task at the global level effectively makes the property local to the
"anonymous target" in which top-level operations are carried out; it will not be defined for other
targets in the buildfile.</p>

<p>A property is made local if the <code>&lt;local&gt;</code> task precedes its definition.  See the
examples section.</p>

<h3>Parameters</h3>
<table class="attr">
  <tr>
    <th scope="col">Attribute</th>
    <th scope="col">Description</th>
    <th scope="col">Required</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>name</td>
    <td>The property to declare in the current scope</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<h3>Examples</h3>

<h4>Temporarily shadow a global property's value</h4>

<pre>
&lt;property name="foo" value="foo"/&gt;

&lt;target name="step1"&gt;
    &lt;echo&gt;Before local: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
    &lt;local name="foo"/&gt;
    &lt;property name="foo" value="bar"/&gt;
    &lt;echo&gt;After local: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
&lt;/target&gt;

&lt;target name="step2" depends="step1"&gt;
    &lt;echo&gt;In step2: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
&lt;/target&gt;</pre>

<p>outputs</p>

<pre class="output">
step1:
     [echo] Before local: foo is foo
     [echo] After local: foo is bar

step2:
     [echo] In step2: foo is foo</pre>

<p>here the <code>local</code> task shadowed the global definition of <code>foo</code> for the
remainder of the target <q>step1</q>.</p>

<h4>Creating thread local properties</h4>

<pre>
&lt;property name="foo" value="foo"/&gt;

&lt;parallel&gt;
    &lt;echo&gt;global 1: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
    &lt;sequential&gt;
        &lt;local name="foo"/&gt;
        &lt;property name="foo" value="bar.1"/&gt;
        &lt;echo&gt;First sequential: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
    &lt;/sequential&gt;
    &lt;sequential&gt;
        &lt;sleep seconds="1"/&gt;
        &lt;echo&gt;global 2: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
    &lt;/sequential&gt;
    &lt;sequential&gt;
        &lt;local name="foo"/&gt;
        &lt;property name="foo" value="bar.2"/&gt;
        &lt;echo&gt;Second sequential: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
    &lt;/sequential&gt;
    &lt;echo&gt;global 3: foo is ${foo}&lt;/echo&gt;
&lt;/parallel&gt;</pre>

<p>outputs something similar to</p>

<pre class="output">
    [echo] global 3: foo is foo
    [echo] global 1: foo is foo
    [echo] First sequential: foo is bar.1
    [echo] Second sequential: foo is bar.2
    [echo] global 2: foo is foo</pre>

<h4>Use inside <code>macrodef</code></h4>

<p>This probably is where <code>local</code> can be applied in the most useful way.  If you needed a
"temporary property" inside a <code>macrodef</code> in Ant prior to Ant 1.8.0 you had to try to come
up with a property name that would be unique across macro invocations.</p>

<p>Say you wanted to write a macro that created the parent directory of a given file.  A naive
approach would be:</p>

<pre>
&lt;macrodef name="makeparentdir"&gt;
    &lt;attribute name="file"/&gt;
    &lt;sequential&gt;
        &lt;dirname property="parent" file="@{file}"/&gt;
        &lt;mkdir dir="${parent}"/&gt;
    &lt;/sequential&gt;
&lt;/macrodef&gt;
&lt;makeparentdir file="some-dir/some-file"/&gt;</pre>

<p>but this would create a global property <code>parent</code> on the first invocation&mdash;and
since properties are not mutable, any subsequent invocation will see the same value and try to
create the same directory as the first invocation.</p>

<p>The recommendation prior to Ant 1.8.0 was to use a property name based on one of the macro's
attributes, like</p>

<pre>
&lt;macrodef name="makeparentdir"&gt;
    &lt;attribute name="file"/&gt;
    &lt;sequential&gt;
        &lt;dirname property="parent.@{file}" file="@{file}"/&gt;
        &lt;mkdir dir="${parent.@{file}}"/&gt;
    &lt;/sequential&gt;
&lt;/macrodef&gt;</pre>

<p>Now invocations for different files will set different properties and the directories will get
created.  Unfortunately this "pollutes" the global properties space.  In addition, it may be hard to
come up with unique names in some cases.</p>

<p>Enter <code>&lt;local&gt;</code>:</p>

<pre>
&lt;macrodef name="makeparentdir"&gt;
    &lt;attribute name="file"/&gt;
    &lt;sequential&gt;
        &lt;local name="parent"/&gt;
        &lt;dirname property="parent" file="@{file}"/&gt;
        &lt;mkdir dir="${parent}"/&gt;
    &lt;/sequential&gt;
&lt;/macrodef&gt;</pre>

<p>Each invocation gets its own property named <code>parent</code> and there will be no global
property of that name at all.</p>

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