ansible.builtin.env lookup – Read the value of environment variables

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 env even without specifying the collections: keyword. However, we recommend you use the FQCN for easy linking to the plugin documentation and to avoid conflicting with other collections that may have the same lookup plugin name.

New in Ansible 0.9

Synopsis

  • Allows you to query the environment variables available on the controller when you invoked Ansible.

Terms

Parameter

Comments

Terms

string / required

Environment variable or list of them to lookup the values for.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

default

any

added in ansible-core 2.13

What return when the variable is undefined

Default: ""

Notes

Note

  • You can pass the Undefined object as default to force an undefined error

Examples

- name: Basic usage
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "'{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'HOME') }}' is the HOME environment variable."

- name: Before 2.13, how to set default value if the variable is not defined.
        This cannot distinguish between USR undefined and USR=''.
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'USR')|default('nobody', True) }} is the user."

- name: Example how to set default value if the variable is not defined, ignores USR=''
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'USR', default='nobody') }} is the user."

- name: Set default value to Undefined, if the variable is not defined
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'USR', default=Undefined) }} is the user."

- name: Set default value to undef(), if the variable is not defined
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'USR', default=undef()) }} is the user."

Return Value

Key

Description

Return value

list / elements=string

Values from the environment variables.

Returned: success

Authors

  • Jan-Piet Mens (@jpmens) <jpmens(at)gmail.com>

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.