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ansible.builtin.lines lookup – read lines from command

Note

This lookup plugin is part of ansible-core and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short plugin name lines. However, we recommend you use the Fully Qualified Collection Name (FQCN) ansible.builtin.lines for easy linking to the plugin documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same lookup plugin name.

Synopsis

  • Run one or more commands and split the output into lines, returning them as a list

Terms

Parameter

Comments

Terms

string / required

command(s) to run

Notes

Note

  • Like all lookups, this runs on the Ansible controller and is unaffected by other keywords such as ‘become’. If you need to use different permissions, you must change the command or run Ansible as another user.
  • Alternatively, you can use a shell/command task that runs against localhost and registers the result.
  • The directory of the play is used as the current working directory.

Examples

- name: We could read the file directly, but this shows output from command
  ansible.builtin.debug: msg="{{ item }} is an output line from running cat on /etc/motd"
  with_lines: cat /etc/motd

- name: More useful example of looping over a command result
  ansible.builtin.shell: "/usr/bin/frobnicate {{ item }}"
  with_lines:
    - "/usr/bin/frobnications_per_host --param {{ inventory_hostname }}"

Return Value

Key

Description

Return value

list / elements=string

lines of stdout from command

Returned: success

Authors

  • Daniel Hokka Zakrisson

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2025 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/lines_lookup.html