yq/usage/formatting-expressions.md

Formatting Expressions

From version v4.41+

You can put expressions into .yq files, use whitespace and comments to break up complex expressions and explain what's going on.

Using expression files and comments

Note that you can execute the file directly - but make sure you make the expression file executable.

Given a sample.yaml file of:

a:
  b: old

And an 'update.yq' expression file of:

#! yq

# This is a yq expression that updates the map
# for several great reasons outlined here.

.a.b = "new" # line comment here
| .a.c = "frog"

# Now good things will happen.

then

./update.yq sample.yaml

will output

a:
  b: new
  c: frog

Flags in expression files

You can specify flags on the shebang line, this only works when executing the file directly.

Given a sample.yaml file of:

a:
  b: old

And an 'update.yq' expression file of:

#! yq -oj

# This is a yq expression that updates the map
# for several great reasons outlined here.

.a.b = "new" # line comment here
| .a.c = "frog"

# Now good things will happen.

then

./update.yq sample.yaml

will output

{
  "a": {
    "b": "new",
    "c": "frog"
  }
}

Commenting out yq expressions

Note that c is no longer set to 'frog'. In this example we're calling yq directly and passing the expression file into --from-file, this is no different from executing the expression file directly.

Given a sample.yaml file of:

a:
  b: old

And an 'update.yq' expression file of:

#! yq
# This is a yq expression that updates the map
# for several great reasons outlined here.

.a.b = "new" # line comment here
# | .a.c = "frog"

# Now good things will happen.

then

yq --from-file update.yq sample.yml

will output

a:
  b: new