How do I use escape curly brackets in template?

[budimanjojo]

Hello, I want to template my chezmoi.yaml file but there's one thing that I just can't figure it out. I want to template my config file like this:

merge:
  - command: nvim
    args:
      - -d
      - "{{ .Source }}"
      - "{{ .Destination }}"
      - "{{ .Target }}"

But apparently chezmoi will assume those args are template variables so it just print out <no-value> in the templated config file. Now, how can I do this? Thank you.

[twpayne]

The easiest way is:

{{ "{{" }} ... {{ "}}" }}

but you can put more inside the quotes, for example:

merge:
  - command: nvim
    args:
      - -d
      - "{{ "{{ .Source }}" }}"
      - "{{ "{{ .Destination }}" }}"
      - "{{ "{{ .Target }}" }}"

[budimanjojo]

Wow it works, thanks!!

[okletzmayr]

Hey there! First I want to express my gratitude for creating and maintaining this great tool. ❤️

I just ran into the same issue after creating .chezmoi.toml.tmpl according to the docs. Would you be open to document this? I only noticed after my neovim diffs got all messed up. 😅

By the way, before checking GitHub for a related Issue, I solved it like this on my end:

[diff]
    command = "nvim"
    args = ["-d", "{{`{{ .Destination }}`}}", "{{`{{ .Target }}`}}"]

[merge]
    command = "nvim"
    args = ["-d", "{{`{{ .Destination }}`}}", "{{`{{ .Source }}", "{{ .Target }}`}}"]

(in case someone wants a copy&paste ready toml format)

[sandipb]

Technically, you only need to do {{ "{{" }}. The end braces don't need to be escaped if you quote the start braces.

Will reduce the spaghetti of braces in your templates a bit.

[jvtrigueros]

It took me a bit grok what @sandipb meant by "only need to...", so to be explicit I believe this is what they mean:

[merge]
  command = "nvim"
  args = ["-d", "{{ `{{` }} .Source }}", "{{ `{{` }} .Destination }}", "{{ `{{` }} .Target }}"]

I opted for backticks to further differentiate, the additional quotes were confusing me. Anyway, thank you for the tip! Super helpful.

[twpayne]

Thanks @jvtrigueros, I didn't realize that you could use "`" in templates.

Another option, which may be more or less readable, is to make more of string a literal, e.g.

[merge]
   command = "nvim"
   args = ["-d", "{{ `{{ .Source }}` }}", "{{ `{{ .Destination }}` }}", "{{ `{{ .Target }}` }}"]

This keeps the quotes and the brackets balanced.

[mkobit]

Another alternative that might work for some is using the delimiters directive. This changes the template tags for the file (e.g., to [[ and ]]), allowing you to use {{ and }} as literal text without escaping.
Add this comment to the top of your config file template:

# chezmoi:template:left-delimiter="[[" right-delimiter=]]
merge:
  command: nvim
  args:
    - -d
    - "{{ .Source }}"
    - "{{ .Destination }}"
    - "{{ .Target }}"

If you need to use actual template variables elsewhere in the file, use the new delimiters:

[[ .chezmoi.homeDir ]]

[sandipb]

Wasn't aware of any system where they allow template tags to be overwritten per file using directives! This is an excellent feature!