How to escape backslash and double quote in Ansible (script module)
Don't be confused by the fact that ansible-playbook prints debug messages in JSON encoded form, so some characters are escaped.
set_fact:
arg: \(-name "{{foo}}" \)
You have correct syntax. This will set arg
to \(-name "bar" \)
if foo
's value is bar
.
But the debug message in this case will look like this:
ok: [localhost] => {
"arg": "\\(-name \"bar\" \\)"
}
Note that special characters for JSON ("
and \
) are escaped.
But there may be some issues with passing this as parameter.
If you call your script like this
script: path/somescript.sh "{{arg}}"
Parameter string will look like this "\(-name "bar" \)"
which is actually 3 concatenated strings in bash: \(-name
+bar
+ \)
, so you will lose double quotes around the bar.
If you want to preserve those double quotes, use:
script: path/somescript.sh '{{arg}}'
You're very close. I think you want to set a variable, not a fact, and I would suggest you use the shell
module instead of the script
module. shell
is more forgiving when it comes to escaping and quoting complex shell commands.
---
- hosts: localhost
vars:
foo: test.yml
arg: \( -name "{{ foo }}" \)
tasks:
- debug: var=arg
- shell: find . {{ arg }}
register: find
- debug: var=find.stdout_lines
And the output:
$ ansible-playbook test.yml
PLAY [localhost] ***************************************************************
TASK [debug] *******************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"arg": "\\( -name \"test.yml\" \\)"
}
TASK [command] *****************************************************************
changed: [localhost]
TASK [debug] *******************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"find.stdout_lines": [
"./test.yml"
]
}
PLAY RECAP *********************************************************************
localhost : ok=3 changed=1 unreachable=0 failed=0