Example of gradle tasks grabbed from the documentation http://www.gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/tutorial_using_tasks.html

build.gradle

// Declare task
task hello {
    doLast {
        println "Hello world !"
    }
}

// Dynamic creation of a task
task helloShorcut << {
    println "Hello World 2"
}

// Variable
task upper << {
    String someString = 'mY_nAmE'
    println "Original: " + someString
    println "Upper case: " + someString.toUpperCase()
}

// for loop
task count << {
    4.times { print "$it " }
}

// Depend on task
task intro(dependsOn: hello) << {
    println "I'm Gradle"
}

// Dynamic creation of a task
4.times { counter ->
    task "task$counter" << {
        println "I'm task number $counter"
    }
}