How does --inventory option in Ansible work when it is given value with a trailing comma?

Question

Man pages for ansible and ansible-playbook define -i option as:

-i PATH, --inventory=PATH
       The PATH to the inve         


        

Answer 1

According to Michael DeHann, who created Ansible, the comma trick you're referring to is a hack that shouldn't be relied upon. It's a hack to run Ansible without an inventory file, for cases where you're going to run against localhost. That way you don't actually have to create an inventory file that just lists localhost.