Ansible not escaping windows path first argument

Question

I have playbook with windows path name in the extra arguments. first argument not escaping the drive letter and slash.

ansible-playbook d.yaml  --extra-vars "ainstalldir=c:\\test stagedir=D:\packages outdir=d:\output\log"

TASK [print inpurt arguments] ********************************************************************************************************
ok: [127.0.0.1] => {
    "msg": "installdir=c:\test, stragedir=D:\\packages, outdir=d:\\output\\log"
}

installdir prints as c:\test, I expect it should print as c:\\test

Here is my playbook.

---
- name: test command line arguments
  connection: local
  hosts: 127.0.0.1
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    installdir: "{{ ainstalldir }}"
    stagedir: "{{ stagedir }}"
    outdir: "{{ outdir }}"

  tasks:
  - name: print inpurt arguments
    debug:
      msg="installdir={{ installdir }}, stragedir={{ stagedir }}, outdir={{ outdir }}"

Any idea how to resolve this issue?

Answer 1

installdir prints as c:\test, I expect it should print as c:\\test

installdir contains: c : tab e s t.

tab is replaced with \t in the debug module output and in effect you see c:\test on the screen.

Other characters starting with backslash in your example (\p, \o, \l) do not have special meaning, so they are treated as two character strings; but you'd observe the same phenomenon with \n (and other escape sequences).

---

1. Don't use debug module to debug things concerned with data, it processes strings to make them printable.

   Instead, use copy with content parameter and check the output in a file:

   - copy:
       content: |-
         installdir={{ installdir }}
         stragedir={{ stagedir }}
         outdir={{ outdir }}
       dest: ./result.txt
   

   (remember you could/should use hexdump to verify what's really inside).

2. Use:

   ansible-playbook d.yaml --extra-vars "ainstalldir=c:\\\test stagedir=D:\\\packages outdir=d:\\\output\\\log"
   

   or

   ansible-playbook d.yaml --extra-vars 'ainstalldir=c:\\test stagedir=D:\\packages outdir=d:\\output\\log'
   

   Backslashes in double- and single quotes are interpreted differently by shell (see for example this question).