# assigning an array using set\_fact

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/assigning-an-array-using-set-fact/20104>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [December 31, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/assigning-an-array-using-set-fact/20104 "2015-12-31T15:29:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Cyril\_Scetbon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/35a633/32.png) [@Cyril\_Scetbon](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Cyril_Scetbon)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/assigning-an-array-using-set-fact/20104/1 "2015-12-31T15:29:54Z")

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Hi,

I’m trying to assign an array to a variable using set\_fact as proposed at [http://stackoverflow.com/a/23522774](http://stackoverflow.com/a/23522774). However, it doesn’t work as expected :

TASK: [set\_fact roles=“[‘dddd’, ‘eeeew’, ‘pffff’, ‘sssss’]”] \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*  
ok: [master]

TASK: [set\_fact roles=“{{ roles + [‘xxxx’] }}”] \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*  
fatal: [master] =\> Failed to template roles=“{{ roles + [‘xxxx’] }}”: an unexpected type error occurred. Error was coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, list found

The first set\_fact assign a string to roles and not an array as expected …