Executing External Processes From Groovy

Goal: execute a program via a command line from groovy code

Option 1: executing a string

{*}Gotchas:*Take care if you wish to pass a quoted argument that contains white space – it will be split into multiple arguments
"""executable "first with space" second"""
each is treated as a separate arg for the external executable:

arg1 = "first
arg2 = with
arg3 = space"
arg4 = second

Option 2: using ant builder's exec task

Ant has an exec task and it be accessed from the AntBuilder object

The good thing is that you now have all the ant features at your disposal and Ant will not break up quoted args containing whitespace.