# command output not registered

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/command-output-not-registered/19196>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [September 6, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/command-output-not-registered/19196 "2015-09-06T17:32:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Larry\_Fast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b3f665/32.png) [@Larry\_Fast](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Larry_Fast)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/command-output-not-registered/19196/1 "2015-09-06T17:32:57Z")

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In the following example echo\_out.stdout is properly populated with “hello” but cat\_testfile.stdout and tail\_testfile are both empty. My real use case is to do a pass/fail test on an external command that dumps it’s output to a file.

- command: echo hello

register: echo\_out

- command: cat /tmp/testfile

register: cat\_testfile

- command: tail /tmp/testfile

register: cat\_testfile

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Larry\_Fast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b3f665/32.png) [@Larry\_Fast](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Larry_Fast)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 6:34pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/command-output-not-registered/19196/2 "2015-09-06T18:34:32Z")

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Resolved. my testfile (output from my external command) contained control characters that caused Ansible’s logging to silently fail. I’m guessing it was corrupting the JSON output. The control character was ^[ part of color coding the output.