Ansible: Store command's stdout in new variable?

Question

Inside my playbook I\'d like to create a variable holding the output of an external command. Afterwards I want to make use of that variable in a couple of templates.

Answer 1

There's no need to set a fact.

    - shell: cat "hello"
      register: cat_contents

    - shell: echo "I cat hello"
      when: cat_contents.stdout == "hello"