# use default during conditional role statement?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/use-default-during-conditional-role-statement/17918>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [April 7, 2015, 1:59pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/use-default-during-conditional-role-statement/17918 "2015-04-07T13:59:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tom\_Paine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/858c86/32.png) [@Tom\_Paine](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tom_Paine)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2015, 1:59pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/use-default-during-conditional-role-statement/17918/1 "2015-04-07T13:59:25Z")

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Goal: conditionally apply a role, but not be required to define the var in every target env.

Can I default a var to empty or null if it isn’t defined as ‘bar’? e.g:

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tom\_Paine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/858c86/32.png) [@Tom\_Paine](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tom_Paine)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2015, 2:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/use-default-during-conditional-role-statement/17918/2 "2015-04-07T14:21:51Z")

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ok, the default using an array was wrong.

This works:

{ role: somerole, when: foo | default(‘’) == ‘bar’ }