ansible.builtin.inventory_hostnames lookup – list of inventory hosts matching a host pattern

Note

This lookup plugin is part of ansible-core and included in all Ansible installations. In most cases, you can use the short plugin name inventory_hostnames. However, we recommend you use the Fully Qualified Collection Name (FQCN) ansible.builtin.inventory_hostnames for easy linking to the plugin documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same lookup plugin name.

Synopsis

  • This lookup understands ‘host patterns’ as used by the hosts: keyword in plays and can return a list of matching hosts from inventory

Notes

Note

  • this is only worth for ‘hostname patterns’ it is easier to loop over the group/group_names variables otherwise.

Examples

- name: show all the hosts matching the pattern, i.e. all but the group www
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ item }}"
  with_inventory_hostnames:
    - all:!www

Return Value

Key

Description

Return value

list / elements=string

list of hostnames that matched the host pattern in inventory

Returned: success

Authors

  • Michael DeHaan

  • Steven Dossett

Hint

Configuration entries for each entry type have a low to high priority order. For example, a variable that is lower in the list will override a variable that is higher up.