How do I get MSBuild Message task to display a property? - msbuild

Question

According to the MSDN documentation, the MSBuild Message task should be able to output the contents of a property to the console.
This can be demonstrated quite simply with the following line:
<Message Text=" MSBuildProjectDirectory = $(MSBuildProjectDirectory)" />
When I run the above line as part of a build target I get something like this:
[exec] MSBuildProjectDirectory = .../somefolderpath
Within my build scripts I have a property that defines the path to an executable file. It's definition looks something like this:
<MyDir Condition="'$(MyDir)' == ''">somepath</MyDir>
<MyEXE Condition="'$(MyEXE)' == ''">$(MyDir)\somefile.exe</MyEXE>
I would like to print out the content of the $(MyEXE).
My expectation was that this would work:
<Message Text=" MyEXE= $(MyEXE)" />
...but it doesn't. In fact, it behaves as though the line wasn't there at all.
For the following:
<Message Text="TEMP START"/>
<Message Text=" MSBuildProjectDirectory = $(MSBuildProjectDirectory)" />
<Message Text='dollar1 "$(MyEXE)"'/>
<Message Text="dollar2 '$(MyEXE)'"/>
<Message Text='dollar3 $(MyEXE)'/>
<Message Text="dollar4 $(MyEXE)"/>
<Message Text='at1 "#(MyEXE)"'/>
<Message Text="at2 '#(MyEXE)'"/>
<Message Text='at3 #(MyEXE)'/>
<Message Text="at4 #(MyEXE)"/>
<Exec Command='echo "$(MyEXE)"' />
<Exec Command='echo FOO' />
<Message Text="TEMP END"/>
...I get the following output:
[exec] TEMP START
[exec] MSBuildProjectDirectory = .../somepath
[exec] at1 ""
[exec] at2 ''
[exec] at3
[exec] at4
[exec] echo FOO
[exec] FOO
[exec] TEMP END
The very next line is
<Exec Command='"$(MyEXE)" /someparameter' />
...which executes the exe successfully, so it clearly contains a value.
It's worth noting that my use of #(MyEXE) is entirely my ignorance clutching at straws.
Does anyone know how I print the content of $(MyEXE) to the console?

Answer 1

In my case, MSBuild.exe is being called from an ant exec task. If this step is removed and MSBuild called directly from the command line, the problem goes away.
Update 2017.02.08:
Investigating further, I have found that our ant build scripts parse the console output from msbuild to 'helpfully' remove 'unwanted' content using an array of regex-based string replacement.
As an aside, the '[exec]' at the beginning of the output that I posted in the question is added by ant.