The issue is that the Ant Exec.java task uses the "cmd" syntax as a way
of handling change of directory duties:
if (myos.toLowerCase().indexOf("windows") >= 0) {
if (!dir.equals(project.resolveFile(".")))
command = "cmd /c cd " + dir + " && " + command;
This codepath has probably never before been exercised on Win98 because
it seems to occur only when a "cd" is necessary. The original developer
probably used NT to test, and I did likewise for the jdom-contrib area.
Alex, the best thing for you to do is figure out how to fix Exec.java on
your Win98 system, contribute that to Ant, then we'll adopt the version
of Ant with the fix.
-jh-