# What does "XXX" mean?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/what-does-xxx-mean/18677>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [July 4, 2015, 5:44pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/what-does-xxx-mean/18677 "2015-07-04T17:44:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Marc\_Abramowitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@Marc\_Abramowitz](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Marc_Abramowitz)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 5:44pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/what-does-xxx-mean/18677/1 "2015-07-04T17:44:41Z")

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Trying to do:

sudo: true  
file: path=/opt/webapp/profilesvc/enabled.txt state=file

and getting:

failed: [localhost] =\> {“failed”: true, “path”: “/opt/webapp/profilesvc/enabled.txt”, “state”: “absent”}  
msg: file (/opt/webapp/profilesvc/enabled.txt) is absent, cannot continue

The directory exists:

vagrant@localmonkey:~$ ls /opt/webapp/profilesvc  
bin include lib local pip-selfcheck.json share src

Any ideas?

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**Author:** ![Diogene\_Laerce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/958977/32.png) [@Diogene\_Laerce](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Diogene_Laerce)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 6:07pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/what-does-xxx-mean/18677/2 "2015-07-04T18:07:10Z")

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Hi,

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Marc\_Abramowitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a5b964/32.png) [@Marc\_Abramowitz](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Marc_Abramowitz)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 6:17pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/what-does-xxx-mean/18677/3 "2015-07-04T18:17:30Z")

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Oops.

> If `file`, the file will NOT be created if it does not exist, see the copy or template module if you want that behavior.

I somehow forgot that and had myself convinced it would create the file for me if it didn’t exist.

Oops.