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ansible.builtin.file – read file contents

Note

This module is part of ansible-base and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short module name file even without specifying the collections: keyword. Despite that, we recommend you use the FQCN for easy linking to the module documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same module name.

New in version 0.9: of ansible.builtin

Synopsis

  • This lookup returns the contents from a file on the Ansible controller’s file system.

Parameters

Parameter Choices/Defaults Configuration Comments
_terms
string / required
path(s) of files to read
lstrip
boolean
    Choices:
  • no ←
  • yes
whether or not to remove whitespace from the beginning of the looked-up file
rstrip
boolean
    Choices:
  • no
  • yes ←
whether or not to remove whitespace from the ending of the looked-up file

Notes

Note

  • if read in variable context, the file can be interpreted as YAML if the content is valid to the parser.
  • this lookup does not understand ‘globing’, use the fileglob lookup instead.

Examples

- debug: msg="the value of foo.txt is {{lookup('file', '/etc/foo.txt') }}"

- name: display multiple file contents
  debug: var=item
  with_file:
    - "/path/to/foo.txt"
    - "bar.txt"  # will be looked in files/ dir relative to play or in role
    - "/path/to/biz.txt"

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this lookup:

Key Returned Description
_raw
list / elements=string
success
content of file(s)


Authors

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2021 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.11/collections/ansible/builtin/file_lookup.html