Retrieve property value dynamically?

["JONES, MARSHALL, ALABS" <ma...@att.com>]

All,
    Can the following be accomplished using properties? I have tried several ways to do this, but have been unsuccessful. Maybe there is a good reason this is not allowed? Or maybe someone can suggest an alternative solution.

    I would like to retrieve the value of a property using a dynamic name rather than hard-coding the name in my buildfile. I am doing this because I do not know the range of possible property values until runtime. 

Given a property file named "build.properties" with the following data.

allbuilds        0,1,2
build.0.date   20030319
build.1.date   20030320
build.2.date   20030321

I need to extract the date of a particular build once the user picks a build number to install. The following code is an example of what I need to do: 

   <property file="build.properties"/>

   <input validargs="${allbuilds}" addproperty="buildnumber" message="Enter build number to install."/>
   <property name="builddate" value="${build.${buildnumber}.date}}"/>

The result should be builddate getting the value of "20030320". Any assistance or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Marshall Jones


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Marshall Jones - Software Engineer
AT&T LABS - Custom and Web Services Development
marshalljones@att.com
(813)878-5683
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