What is item.strip().split()[0] ?

[AnsibleGuy]

May I know what is " item.strip().split()[0] " mean in below code? I'm thining, first value in a space seperated line. Ref: https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-nfs/blob/master/tasks/main.yml - name: Ensure directories to export exist file: 'path="{{ item.strip().split()[0] }}" state=directory' with_items: "{{ nfs_exports }}" notify: restart nfs

[Mathias Ettinger]

Almost. It's the first value in a whitespace separated line, which means 'foo bar' and 'foo\n \tbar' would both be splitted to ['foo', 'bar'] and element 0 is 'foo' for both.

On a side note, split() without arguments has extra logic that make the call to strip() redundant.

Lastly, nfs_exports is a list defined as empty by default in https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-nfs/blob/master/defaults/main.yml. You may want to populate it by other means when running the playbook.

[Arbab Nazar]

You can check the readme file of the role and take the example from there and create small playbook like this:

---
- hosts: all
  become: no
  connection: local
  vars:
    nfs_exports: { "/home/public *(rw,sync,no_root_squash)" }
  tasks:

    - name: Ensure directories to export

exist
      debug:
        msg: "{{ item.strip().split()[0] }}"
      with_items: "{{ nfs_exports }}"

and run it like this to see the result:

─➤  ansible-playbook -i localhost, -c local playbook.yml


PLAY [all] *******************************************************************************************************************


TASK [Gathering Facts] *******************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]


TASK [Ensure directories to export exist] ************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => (item=/home/public *(rw,sync,no_root_squash)) => {
    "item": "/home/public *(rw,sync,no_root_squash)",
    "msg": "/home/public"
}


PLAY RECAP *******************************************************************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0

Hope that helps you to understand the value.