# Escaping special characters inside variable?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/escaping-special-characters-inside-variable/16879>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [November 25, 2014, 5:02pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/escaping-special-characters-inside-variable/16879 "2014-11-25T17:02:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_Oliver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/97f17d/32.png) [@John\_Oliver](https://forum.ansible.com/u/John_Oliver)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2014, 5:02pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/escaping-special-characters-inside-variable/16879/1 "2014-11-25T17:02:56Z")

</div>

- name: Check if postgres is already allowed via IPv4  
shell: grep ‘^-A\ INPUT\ -s\ {{roundcube\_host}}\ -p\ tcp\ -m\ state\ –state\ NEW\ -m\ tcp\ –dport\ 5432\ -j\ ACCEPT’ /etc/sysconfig/iptables \>/dev/null 2\>&1  
ignore\_errors: true  
register: result

- name: Allow incoming IPv4 PostGreSQL connections through iptables  
lineinfile: dest=/etc/sysconfig/iptables  
regexp=‘^-A\ INPUT\ -s\ {{roundcube\_host}}\ -p\ tcp\ -m\ state\ –state\ NEW\ -m\ tcp\ –dport\ 5432\ -j\ ACCEPT’  
insertbefore=‘^-A\ INPUT\ -j\ LOGGING’  
line=“-A INPUT -s {{roundcube\_host}} -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 5432 -j ACCEPT”  
when: result|failed  
notify: Restart iptables

My test will always fail because I’m sure it’s trying to evaluate the {{roundcube\_host}} variable without escaping the periods in the IP address.

I could write a sed recipe that will read out {{roundcube\_host}}, insert backslashes before dots, and write that to a new variable. But has this wheel already been invented? I can assume the presence of tools like sed on the target host, but not on the host that’s running the playbook. And it’s possible that the playbook might be run from either a GNU or BSD system, and a recipe I write for one might not work with the other. It seems a little messy to send this to the remote host for operations and bring the result back 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vaida.dan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5daacb/32.png) [@vaida.dan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/vaida.dan)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2015, 5:23pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/escaping-special-characters-inside-variable/16879/2 "2015-01-03T17:23:17Z")

</div>

When you say you’re sure, is that because you tried ‘debug: var=result’?

Furthermore, are you doing something else with Postgres’ port in your iptables rule? If not, simply remove the first task and then in the second task, remove everything before ‘-p\ tcp…’ from the regexp and you should be fine.  
Regardless, you should be fine with only the lineinfile task. You can achieve true idempotence with a proper regexp.

Personally, I would set the rules through an Ansible template.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tom\_Bamford1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tom\_Bamford1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tom_Bamford1)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/escaping-special-characters-inside-variable/16879/3 "2015-01-03T18:46:13Z")

</div>

Hi John

Python has the re.escape() method but I don’t know if Ansible exposes this in the form of a Jinja2 filter (seemingly not, looking at [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/runner/filter\_plugins/core.py](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/runner/filter_plugins/core.py)).

I’m curious, why both the check with grep _and_ the regexp option to lineinfile?

Regards  
Tom