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win_lineinfile - Ensure a particular line is in a file, or replace an existing line using a back-referenced regular expression.

New in version 2.0.

Synopsis
Options
Examples
Notes
- Status

Synopsis

This module will search a file for a line, and ensure that it is present or absent.
This is primarily useful when you want to change a single line in a file only.

Options

parameter	required	default	choices	comments
backrefs	no	no	yes no	Used with `state=present`. If set, line can contain backreferences (both positional and named) that will get populated if the `regexp` matches. This flag changes the operation of the module slightly; `insertbefore` and `insertafter` will be ignored, and if the `regexp` doesn't match anywhere in the file, the file will be left unchanged. If the `regexp` does match, the last matching line will be replaced by the expanded line parameter.
backup	no	no	yes no	Create a backup file including the timestamp information so you can get the original file back if you somehow clobbered it incorrectly.
create	no	no	yes no	Used with `state=present`. If specified, the file will be created if it does not already exist. By default it will fail if the file is missing.
encoding	no	auto		Specifies the encoding of the source text file to operate on (and thus what the output encoding will be). The default of `auto` will cause the module to auto-detect the encoding of the source file and ensure that the modified file is written with the same encoding. An explicit encoding can be passed as a string that is a valid value to pass to the .NET framework System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding() method - see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.encoding%28v=vs.110%29.aspx. This is mostly useful with `create=yes` if you want to create a new file with a specific encoding. If `create=yes` is specified without a specific encoding, the default encoding (UTF-8, no BOM) will be used.
insertafter	no	EOF	EOF regex	Used with `state=present`. If specified, the line will be inserted after the last match of specified regular expression. A special value is available; `EOF` for inserting the line at the end of the file. If specified regular expression has no matches, EOF will be used instead. May not be used with `backrefs`.
insertbefore	no		BOF regex	Used with `state=present`. If specified, the line will be inserted before the last match of specified regular expression. A value is available; `BOF` for inserting the line at the beginning of the file. If specified regular expression has no matches, the line will be inserted at the end of the file. May not be used with `backrefs`.
line	no			Required for `state=present`. The line to insert/replace into the file. If `backrefs` is set, may contain backreferences that will get expanded with the `regexp` capture groups if the regexp matches.
newline	no	windows	windows unix	Specifies the line separator style to use for the modified file. This defaults to the windows line separator (`\r\n`). Note that the indicated line separator will be used for file output regardless of the original line separator that appears in the input file.
path	yes			The path of the file to modify. Note that the Windows path delimiter `\` must be escaped as `\\` when the line is double quoted. Before 2.3 this option was only usable as dest, destfile and name. aliases: dest, destfile, name
regexp	no			The regular expression to look for in every line of the file. For `state=present`, the pattern to replace if found; only the last line found will be replaced. For `state=absent`, the pattern of the line to remove. Uses .NET compatible regular expressions; see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hs600312%28v=vs.110%29.aspx.
state	no	present	present absent	Whether the line should be there or not.
validate	no	None		Validation to run before copying into place. Use %s in the command to indicate the current file to validate. The command is passed securely so shell features like expansion and pipes won't work.

Examples

# Before 2.3, option 'dest', 'destfile' or 'name' was used instead of 'path'
- win_lineinfile:
    path: C:\temp\example.conf
    regexp: '^name='
    line: 'name=JohnDoe'

- win_lineinfile:
    path: C:\temp\example.conf
    regexp: '^name='
    state: absent

- win_lineinfile:
    path: C:\temp\example.conf
    regexp: '^127\.0\.0\.1'
    line: '127.0.0.1 localhost'

- win_lineinfile:
    path: C:\temp\httpd.conf
    regexp: '^Listen '
    insertafter: '^#Listen '
    line: Listen 8080

- win_lineinfile:
    path: C:\temp\services
    regexp: '^# port for http'
    insertbefore: '^www.*80/tcp'
    line: '# port for http by default'

# Create file if it doesn't exist with a specific encoding
- win_lineinfile:
    path: C:\temp\utf16.txt
    create: yes
    encoding: utf-16
    line: This is a utf-16 encoded file

# Add a line to a file and ensure the resulting file uses unix line separators
- win_lineinfile:
    path: C:\temp\testfile.txt
    line: Line added to file
    newline: unix

# Update a line using backrefs
- win_lineinfile:
    path: C:\temp\example.conf
    backrefs: yes
    regexp: '(^name=)'
    line: '$1JohnDoe'

Notes

Note

As of Ansible 2.3, the dest option has been changed to path as default, but dest still works as well.

Status

This module is flagged as preview which means that it is not guaranteed to have a backwards compatible interface.

For help in developing on modules, should you be so inclined, please read Community Information & Contributing, Testing Ansible and Developing Modules.

© 2012–2017 Michael DeHaan
© 2017 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/win_lineinfile_module.html