Extract a substring from a variable in Ansible

Question

I want to remove a specific substring from a variable in Ansible and store the result into another variable. Say I have something like below:

greeting: "Hello_World"

I want to remove the substring "_World" from greeting and store the result in another Ansible variable.

Example: greet_word: "Hello"

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Q: "Remove the substring '_World'"

A: There are more options:

• Use the filter regex_replace

greet_word: "{{ greeting | regex_replace('^(.*)_World(.*)$', '\\1\\2') }}"

gives

greet_word: Hello

• Split the string on the underscore '_' and take the first item. The expressions below give the same result.

greet_word: "{{ greeting.split('_').0 }}

greet_word: "{{ greeting.split('_') | first }}

• Use the Jinja filter replace. The expression below gives the same result.

greet_word: "{{ greeting | replace('_World', '') }}"