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Ansible troubleshooting — Error loop-var-prefix

How to Solve the Ansible Error loop-var-prefix

Luca Berton
5 min readNov 3, 2023

Introduction

When writing Ansible playbooks, it’s important to maintain clarity and consistency in your code to ensure it’s easy to understand and maintain. One common area where clarity can be improved is in handling loop variables, especially in nested loops. To address this, Ansible provides a rule called “loop-var-prefix” to help avoid conflicts and enforce clear variable naming in loops.

Why is Variable Naming Important in Loops?

In Ansible, loops are frequently used to iterate over lists of items and perform tasks. By default, Ansible uses the variable name “item” for loop iterations. While this is convenient, it can lead to ambiguity and confusion when you have nested loops or multiple loops in the same playbook.

To address this issue, the “loop-var-prefix” rule encourages users to define their loop variables explicitly, providing a more descriptive name. Additionally, it suggests that loop variables should have a prefix, which can be configured according to your preferences.

Configuring the Loop Variable Prefix

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Luca Berton
Luca Berton

Written by Luca Berton

I help creative Automation DevOps, Cloud Engineer, System Administrator, and IT Professional to succeed with Ansible Technology to automate more things everyday

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