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formattingescapingyamltravis-cistring-literals

Quoting YAML (for Travis CI)

How would I escape a whole line in YAML? I want to have json='{"title": "travis_saulshanabrook_site","key": "'$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)'"}' in a list, but I can't get it to parse into a string. I can put single quotes around the whole line, but then I would have to escape every single quote in my string, making it very hard to read. The string will be run as a bash command in Travis CI

Solution

  • The most elegant solution is to use the literal style | indicator, with the - modifier to strip the final newline. That way there are no extra quotes necessary.

    If this scalar happens to be the only thing in a YAML file use:

    |-
  json='{"title": "travis_saulshanabrook_site","key": "'$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)'"}'

    if it is a mapping value for key abc:

    abc: |-
  json='{"title": "travis_saulshanabrook_site","key": "'$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)'"}'

    or if it is part of a list:

    - |-
  json='{"title": "travis_saulshanabrook_site","key": "'$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)'"}'