# problems with quoting for ansible commands **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [October 21, 2013, 2:24am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problems-with-quoting-for-ansible-commands/13725 "2013-10-21T02:24:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kesten\_Broughton2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecc23a/32.png) [@Kesten\_Broughton2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Kesten_Broughton2)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 2:24am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problems-with-quoting-for-ansible-commands/13725/1 "2013-10-21T02:24:11Z")
What is the proper way to quote a shell command like the following: shell: wget --header ‘Cookie: gpw=http%3A\_url’ download\_url Interestingly, the colon in the http:// in the download url (see details below) is protected somehow, so that it doesn’t need any special treatment to parse correctly. However, the colon after Cookie won’t allow ansible to parse the command. My normal workaround is to quote the colon with alternate single or double quotes from the outer quote. But as you can see in the output of the actual command below, the line getting fed into wget is --header 'Cookie":" gpw… and this fails. As a general comment, I find that most of my unproductive time with ansible is spent trying to dance around the quoting rules. It’s a bit of a false premise to have a DSL that is so simple that you don’t need any programming skills, yet in reality, you need expert level knowledge of shell expansion rules and on top of that, an extra layer of yaml/ansible translation. It’s one of the main reasons I sometimes just copy over a bash script and execute it rather than fighting the quoted fight. I know that distributed shell expansion is just a very hard problem, as it has been the achilles heel of most systems I have tested that try to solve this problem. And perhaps it is just my skills that are weak in this area. But I would really appreciate a little more work in this area in general, and as a stopgap, a dozen or so examples of more challenging quoting issues from across the module library. Here is the actual command issued and the error debug output + error: - name: Get the rpm for oracle jdk shell: creates=“{{\_ansible\_downloads}}/{{jdk\_rpm\_file}}” chdir=“{{\_ansible\_downloads}}” wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate –header ‘Cookie":" gpw\_e24=http%3A%2F%[2Fwww.oracle.com](http://2Fwww.oracle.com)%2F’ “[http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/7u25-b15/jdk-7u25-linux-x64.rpm](http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/7u25-b15/jdk-7u25-linux-x64.rpm)” -O “{{jdk\_rpm\_file}}” REMOTE\_MODULE command creates=“/tmp/ansible/1.7.0\_oracle\_jdk\_u25.rpm” chdir=“/tmp/ansible” wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header ‘Cookie":" gpw\_e24=http%3A%2F%[2Fwww.oracle.com](http://2Fwww.oracle.com)%2F’ “[http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/7u25-b15/jdk-7u25-linux-x64.rpm](http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/7u25-b15/jdk-7u25-linux-x64.rpm)” -O “1.7.0\_oracle\_jdk\_u25.rpm” #USE\_SHELL And based on some ansible-list emails and github issues, i tried variations of the following to no avail: quoting the entire line, backslash escaping etc. which all gave syntax errors: “wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header ‘Cookie: gpw\_e24=http%3A%2F%[2Fwww.oracle.com](http://2Fwww.oracle.com)%2F’ [http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/7u25-b15/jdk-7u25-linux-x64.rpm](http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/7u25-b15/jdk-7u25-linux-x64.rpm) -O {{jdk\_rpm\_file}}” ERROR: Syntax Error while loading YAML script, /Users/kbroughton/vcp/git/21ct/proto/lynx-ansible/roles/centos\_common/tasks/centos\_oracle\_jdk.yml Note: The error may actually appear before this position: line 21, column 69 tips most welcome! ---
**Author:** ![kahlil.hodgson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9bd4f/32.png) [@kahlil.hodgson](https://forum.ansible.com/u/kahlil.hodgson)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 2:28am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problems-with-quoting-for-ansible-commands/13725/2 "2013-10-21T02:28:39Z")
The problem is the two character sequence ': ', that is, a colon followed by a space, which is a special YAML marker. I typically get around this using YAML '\>' quoting as follows: shell: \>     wget --header 'Cookie: gpw=http%3A\_url' download\_url Hope this helps, K Kahlil (Kal) Hodgson GPG: C9A02289 Head of Technology (m) +61 (0) 4 2573 0382 DealMax Pty Ltd (w) +61 (0) 3 9008 5281 Suite 1415 401 Docklands Drive Docklands VIC 3008 Australia "All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer." -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925 ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2013, 1:15am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problems-with-quoting-for-ansible-commands/13725/3 "2013-10-22T01:15:41Z")
Basically you just can’t have an unquoted colon in the value of a hash element, and can then quote the line. ---
**Author:** ![kahlil.hodgson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9bd4f/32.png) [@kahlil.hodgson](https://forum.ansible.com/u/kahlil.hodgson)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2013, 3:54am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problems-with-quoting-for-ansible-commands/13725/4 "2013-10-22T03:54:34Z")
Sadly, it’s the space after the colon that is the problem. shell: wget --header ‘Cookie:gpw=http%3A\_url’ download\_url will work K ---
**Author:** ![Kesten\_Broughton2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecc23a/32.png) [@Kesten\_Broughton2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Kesten_Broughton2)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2013, 2:13pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problems-with-quoting-for-ansible-commands/13725/5 "2013-10-22T14:13:15Z")
Thanks Kahlil It worked. It’s a little finicky in that it doesn’t play “nice” with normal facilities like spanning lines and other shell options. [Works not] shell: > wget --header ‘Cookie: gpw=http%3A\_url’ download\_url -O output\_file [Works] shell: \> wget --header ‘Cookie: gpw=http%3A\_url’ download\_url -O output\_file [Works] shell: \> wget --header ‘Cookie: gpw=http%3A\_url’ download\_url -O output\_file ---
**Author:** ![Kesten\_Broughton2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecc23a/32.png) [@Kesten\_Broughton2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Kesten_Broughton2)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2013, 2:17pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/problems-with-quoting-for-ansible-commands/13725/6 "2013-10-22T14:17:42Z")
I think my last post got posted incompletely. Thanks Kahlil It works, but it’s a little finicky in that it doesn’t play nice with other ansible constructs [Works] shell: \> wget --header ‘Cookie: gpw=http%3A\_url’ download\_url -O output\_file creates=output\_file [Doesn’t work: putting other shell options before it] shell: creates=output\_file > wget --header ‘Cookie: gpw=http%3A\_url’ download\_url -O output\_file [Doesn’t work: spanning multiple lines] shell: \> wget --header ‘Cookie: gpw=http%3A\_url’ download\_url -O output\_file But hey, it works enough. Thanks!