Documentation

PLEASE NOTE: This document applies to v2.15 version and not to the latest stable release v2.16

Documentation for other releases can be found by using the version selector in the left bottom of any doc page.

file

Read file contents from the filesystem.

Parameters

Parameter	Required	Type	Values	Description
path	yes	string		Path(s) of files to read
lstrip	no	boolean	true/false	Whether or not to remove whitespace from the beginning of the file. [default: `false`]
rstrip	no	boolean	true/false	Whether or not to remove whitespace from the ending of the file. [default: `true`]

Notes

This lookup returns the contents from a file on the local filesystem.
When keyword and positional parameters are used together, positional parameters must be listed before keyword parameters.
If read in variable context, the file can be interpreted as YAML if the content is valid to the parser.
This lookup does not understand ‘globbing’, use the fileglob lookup instead.
The file must be readable by the user running the script.

Example

- name: Read a file
  debug:
    msg: "{{ file('/etc/hostname') }}"

- name: Read file without stripping whitespace
  debug:
    msg: "{{ file('/tmp/data.txt', rstrip=false) }}"

- name: Read file and strip whitespace from both ends
  debug:
    msg: "{{ file('/tmp/config.txt', lstrip=true, rstrip=true) }}"

- name: Read multiple files in a loop
  debug:
    msg: "{{ item }}"
  loop:
    - "{{ file('/etc/hostname') }}"
    - "{{ file('/etc/os-release') }}"