gcloud_topic_escaping (1)

NAME

gcloud topic escaping - list/dictionary-type argument escaping supplementary help

DESCRIPTION

List/dictionary-type argument escaping supplementary help.
gcloud supports list-type and dictionary-type flags that take one argument which is a list of one or more comma-separated items:

--list-flag=value1,value2,value3

--dict-flag=key1=value1,key2=value2

In the case of a dict-type flag, each item is a key-value pair separated by '='. If more than one '=' is present, the first is used.
In order to include commas in your arguments, specify an alternate delimiter using the following syntax:

^DELIM^flag value, with comma

where DELIM is a sequence of one or more characters that may not appear in any value in the list.
NOTE: In cmd.exe and PowerShell on Windows, ^ is a special character and you must escape it by repeating it. In the following examples, every time you see ^, replace it with ^^^^.

EXAMPLES

In these examples, a list-type or dictionary-type flag is given, along with a shell comment explaining how it is parsed. The parsed flags are shown here using Python-style list or dict formats (in other languages, what Python calls "dicts" are often called "associative arrays," "maps," or "hashes").
Basic example:

--list-flag=^:^a,b:c,d # => ['a,b', 'c,d']

Multi-character delimiters are allowed:

--list-flag=^--^a-,b--c # => ['a-,b', 'c']

Just one '^' has no special meaning:

--list-flag=^a,b,c # => ['^a', 'b', 'c']

This is an alternative way of starting with '^':

--list-flag=^,^^a,b,c # => ['^a', 'b', 'c']

A '^' anywhere but the start has no special meaning:

--list-flag=a^:^,b,c # => ['a^:^', 'b', 'c']

Dictionary-type arguments work exactly the same as list-type arguments:

--dict-flag=^:^a=b,c:d=f,g # => {'a': 'b,c', 'd': 'f,g'}

To reserve ephemeral IP addresses, passed in as a list, which are being used by virtual machine instances in the us-central1 region, run:

$ gcloud compute addresses create \
  --addresses ^:^123.456.789.198:22.333.146.189:789.312.645      \
           --region us-central1

To create a Google Compute Engine virtual machine instance with metadata as a list ({'key1': '"value1"', 'key2': 'value2', 'key3': 'value3Index1,value3Index2', 'key4': 'value4'), run:

$ gcloud compute instances create example-instance1 \
  --metadata \
  ^:^key1="value1":key2=value2:key3=value3Index1,value3Index2,\ valueIndex3:key4=value4