# Is there any way for indirect reference in a playbook?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-there-any-way-for-indirect-reference-in-a-playbook/12218>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [January 19, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-there-any-way-for-indirect-reference-in-a-playbook/12218 "2013-01-19T21:11:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Edu\_el\_Ligre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f05b48/32.png) [@Edu\_el\_Ligre](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Edu_el_Ligre)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-there-any-way-for-indirect-reference-in-a-playbook/12218/1 "2013-01-19T21:11:11Z")

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Haven’t found any info about this. I can probably work around this itch, but if variable indirection is available, I would use it.

Cheers!

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**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2013, 11:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-there-any-way-for-indirect-reference-in-a-playbook/12218/2 "2013-01-19T23:11:25Z")

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You can't do a Perl style $$var, but you can use hashes to simulate this.

$hash.{$somevar}

So essentially you can do this:

$hostvars.{$ansible\_hostname}.{$variable\_name}

Syntax differences if we are talking about Jinja2 versus playbooks, of course.

$ansible\_hostname is an automatically set magic variable.

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**Author:** ![Eduardo\_Esclapes\_Gim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e274bd/32.png) [@Eduardo\_Esclapes\_Gim](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Eduardo_Esclapes_Gim)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/is-there-any-way-for-indirect-reference-in-a-playbook/12218/3 "2013-01-20T22:04:48Z")

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Thanks! Very useful trick.