Preserving list objects with Jinja2-style variables

Archives Ansible Project
1

Dear list,

please consider this playbook:

  - name: test playbook
    hosts: localhost
    gather_facts: no
    vars:
      mylist:
        - 1
        - 2
        - 3
      othervar: '{{mylist}}'
      escaped: \{{mylist}}
    tasks:
      - debug: msg='{{mylist.__class__}} {{othervar.__class__}} {{escaped.__class__}}'

The output is (list, unicode, unicode), which is rather unfortunate.

How do I preserve the type of a variable when interpolating like
above?

2

The same problem exists with booleans, and probably all other types:
Jinja2 templating returns strings, no matter what type you pass in.
This means that with legacy-style variables deprecated, and Jinja2
interpolating the inventory, there is no way in Ansible to preserve
the type of variables in the inventory.

3

Types in the playbooks don’t matter because all the necessary casting happens in the modules.