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

gcloud supports list-type and dictionary-type flags that take oneargument 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 delimiterusing the following syntax:

^DELIM^flagvalue,withcomma

whereDELIM is a sequence of one or more characters thatmay not appear in any value in the list.

NOTE: In cmd.exe and PowerShell on Windows,^ is a specialcharacter and you must escape it by repeating it. In the following examples,every time you see^, replace it with^^^^.

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 byvirtual machine instances in the us-central1 region, run:

gcloudcomputeaddressescreate--addresses^:^123.456.789.198:22.333.146.189:789.312.645--regionus-central1

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

gcloudcomputeinstancescreateexample-instance1--metadata^:^key1="value1":key2=value2:key3=value3Index1,value3Index2,valueIndex3:key4=value4