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Control quotes

Kubesplit reformats every resource it writes using yamkix, so it inherits yamkix's quote-handling options. This guide shows the before/after behavior.

Preserve quotes (default)

By default, quotes present in the input are kept exactly as they were — same characters, same quote type (single or double).

Given this input:

---
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1 # with comment
kind: ReplicaSet
metadata:
  name: tname
  namespace: tns
  annotations:
    string_no_quotes: frontend
    string_single_quotes: 'frontend'
    string_double_quotes: "frontend"
    boolean_no_quotes: true
    boolean_single_quotes: 'true'
    number_no_quotes: 1
    number_single_quotes: '1'

the generated file is identical (comments preserved, quotes untouched):

---
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1 # with comment
kind: ReplicaSet
metadata:
  name: tname
  namespace: tns
  annotations:
    string_no_quotes: frontend
    string_single_quotes: 'frontend'
    string_double_quotes: "frontend"
    boolean_no_quotes: true
    boolean_single_quotes: 'true'
    number_no_quotes: 1
    number_single_quotes: '1'

Remove unnecessary quotes with -q/--no-quotes-preserved

Use -q/--no-quotes-preserved to strip quotes that are not required:

kubesplit --input replicaset.yml --output out --no-quotes-preserved

With this flag:

  • Quotes around pure strings are removed.
  • Quotes around booleans and numbers are kept but normalized to single quotes (so YAML still reads them as strings where you meant strings).
  • Values that had no quotes stay unquoted.

The annotations above become:

    string_no_quotes: frontend
    string_single_quotes: frontend
    string_double_quotes: frontend
    boolean_no_quotes: true
    boolean_single_quotes: 'true'
    number_no_quotes: 1
    number_single_quotes: '1'

Note

kubesplit is not fully Kubernetes-aware: --no-quotes-preserved applies to the whole document, not only to string-sensitive fields such as .metadata.annotations or container environment values. Review the result if you rely on quoting to keep specific values as strings.

Force double quotes with -E/--enforce-double-quotes

When you strip quotes with -q, kubesplit re-quotes booleans/numbers with single quotes by default. Add -E/--enforce-double-quotes to use double quotes instead:

kubesplit --input replicaset.yml --output out --no-quotes-preserved --enforce-double-quotes

    boolean_single_quotes: "true"
    number_single_quotes: "1"

-E has no effect without -q (there is nothing to re-quote when quotes are preserved).

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