Retrieving a variable as list passed from one stage to another in Azure pipeline

Question

I need help in retrieving a variable as list passed from one stage to another in Azure pipeline. I have tried multiple methods but I only managed to echo the first element of list.

In the stageA below, I create a variable output foo which returns a list of strings. I then retrieve this variable in stageB as bar and try to print it for validating the format but only get the first element.

- stage: StageA
  jobs:
  - job: JobA
    steps:
      - script: |
          ...
          myList=...
          echo "Printing out my list: ${myList[@]}" # prints perfectly fine list
          echo "##vso[task.setvariable variable=foo;isOutput=true]${myList[@]}" # prints perfectly fine list
        name: getList

- stage: StageB
  dependsOn: StageA
  variables:
      bar: $[ stageDependencies.StageA.JobA.outputs['getList.foo'] ]
  jobs:
  - job: JobB
    steps:
      - script: |
          echo $(bar) # prints first element of list
          for b in $(bar); do echo $b; done; # prints first element of list
          echo ${bar[@]} # prints nothing
          echo ${bar[*]} # # prints nothing

If there's anything I am missing over here, I'd appreciate some suggestions regarding how to fix it. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This is not possible because variables are just plain strings. You could try to pass JSON as a string and then in the subsequent stage use jq to process it.

Or any other way like a string with delimiter and then parse it, split and process.