Removing specific characters from a string on ansible

Question

I have the following

- set_fact:
   test_result: " {{ htmlres.content | regex_search('http://website([0-9]+)', '\\1') }}"

Using debug, this returns the following " '[01]'"

Wanting only the number, I did some experimenting using the replace() function and was able to strip the [ ] by adding the following:

- set_fact:
   test_result: " {{ htmlres.content | regex_search('http://website([0-9]+)', '\\1')
| replace('[','') | replace(']','') }}"

My problem now is that the output is now " '01' and I can't seem to remove the ' or the whitespace.

Adding | trim to the end for some reason doesn't remove the whitespaces, and adding regex_search('\'','') also doesn't seem to escape the character and work.

Am I missing something?

Here's the output from the debug after the first removal:

"msg": [
    " '01'",
    ...

Thanks

Solution

You are thinking way too difficult. regex_search() returns an array, and you want the first item.

- set_fact:
    test_result: "{{ htmlres.content | regex_search('http://website([0-9]+)', '\\1') | first }}"

The blank at the start is the result of your assignment of test_result:

    test_result: " {{ htmlres.content ...
                  ^-- here

Just remove it.

Comments

[Ress]

Wow I didn't even notice the first space. Also thanks for clarifying that it returns an array. It's matching correctly now! Thanks!