Java "constant string too long" compile error. Only happens using Ant, not when using Eclipse

I have a few really long strings in one class for initializing user information. When I compile in Eclipse, I don't get any errors or warnings, and the resulting .jar runs fine.

Recently, I decided to create an ant build file to use. Whenever I compile the same class with ant, I get the "constant string too long" compile error. I've tried a number of ways to set the java compiler executable in ant to make sure that I'm using the exact same version as in Eclipse.

I'd rather figure out how to get the same successful compile I get in Eclipse in Ant than try to rework the code to dynamically concatenate the strings.

Solution 1:

Someone is trying to send you a message :-) In the time you've spend fiddling with compiler versions you could have loaded the data from a text file - which is probably where it belongs.

Check out:

• java.util.Properties
• Apache Commons FileUtils.readFileToString()

Solution 2:

I found I could use the apache commons lang StringUtils.join( Object[] ) method to solve this.

public static final String CONSTANT = org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils.join( new String[] {
  "This string is long", 
  "really long...", 
  "really, really LONG!!!" 
} );

Solution 3:

Nothing of above worked for me. I have created one text file with name test.txt and read this text file using below code

String content = new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get("test.txt")));