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DevOps / Ansible Interview questions

How does Ansible's Jinja2 templating work in playbooks?

Jinja2 is the templating engine Ansible uses to evaluate expressions like {{ variable }}, conditionals, and loops, both directly inside playbook YAML values and inside .j2 template files processed by the template module.

# Inline in a playbook
- name: Show a computed value
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ ansible_facts['memtotal_mb'] // 1024 }} GB of RAM"

# Inside a .j2 template file
server_name {{ inventory_hostname }};
{% if enable_ssl %}
listen 443 ssl;
{% endif %}

Inside {{ }} expressions, Ansible supports the full range of Jinja2 features: arithmetic, string manipulation, and filters (like {{ my_list | length }} or {{ name | upper }}) that transform a value inline. Template files use the block-style {% %} syntax for control flow such as if/else and for loops, letting a single template generate different output per host based on that host's variables and facts, which is what makes the template module powerful for generating per-host configuration files from one shared source file.

What syntax wraps a Jinja2 expression that outputs a value?
What lets a Jinja2 expression transform a value inline, like uppercasing a string?

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