You may have a look into the following minimal example playbook
---
- hosts: localhost
become: false
gather_facts: false
tasks:
- name: Show provided content and type
debug:
msg:
- "var1 contains {{ var1 }}"
- "var1 is of tpye {{ var1 | type_debug }}"
which will called with
ansible-playbook extra.yml --extra-vars="var1=a,b,c"
resulting into an output of
TASK [Show provided content and type] ******
ok: [localhost] =>
msg:
- var1 contains a,b,c
- var1 is of tpye unicode
I understand that you like to get a list out of it for further processing. Since there is a string of comma separated values this is quite simple to achieve, just split the string on the separator.
- name: Create list and loop over elements
debug:
msg: "{{ item }}"
loop: "{{ var1 | split(',') }}"
will result into an output of
TASK [Create list and loop over elements] ******
ok: [localhost] => (item=a) =>
msg: a
ok: [localhost] => (item=b) =>
msg: b
ok: [localhost] => (item=c) =>
msg: c
As the example show packages names, the use cause might be to install or validate packages and which are provided in a list of comma separated values (pkgcsv).
In example for the yum module – Manages packages with the yum package manager and because of the Notes
When used with a loop: each package will be processed individually, it is much more efficient to pass the list directly to the name option.
one should better proceed further with
- name: Install a list of packages with a list variable
ansible.builtin.yum:
name: "{{ pkgcsv | split(',') }}"
or, as the module has the capabilities to do so, one could also leave the CSV just as it is
- name: Install a list of packages with a list variable
ansible.builtin.yum:
name: "{{ pkgcsv }}"
Further Reading
As this could be helpful for other or in future cases.
