I'm with Stefan on this one. �I'm not a big fan of "candy machine" interfaces that depend on a flag to control behaviour. �The name copyFile implies that its job is to copy a file, not to check if the new file already exists and should only be overwritten if the original file is newer. �If you want that behaviour, create a copyFileIfNewer method that has the same signature, does the appropriate checking, then calls copyFile. Its cleaner and keeps the intent of the method clear. Glenn McAllister TID - Software Developer - VisualAge for Java IBM Toronto Lab, (416) 448-3805 "An approximate answer to the right question is better than the right answer to the wrong question." - John W. Tukey Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: � � � [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject: � � � �Re: cvs commit: jakarta-ant/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs Copydir.java >>>>> "DM" == David Maclean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: �DM> Can it not be conditional depending on the parameter to copyFile DM> (a boolean) so that tasks that want to make use of that feature DM> may do so (e.g. Rmic) rather that duplicating the code in lots of DM> tasks. The default is to ignore the check. This is what I've done with my patch 8^), just with the check on by default as this is the behavior we had before. Stefan
