Hi All,

I have been using Packer for quite some time now and the way variables are 
evaluated\validated at runtime has always been a point of confusion.  I 
have tried many different combinations of assigning a blank string "" value 
and a null value, but I can't seem to get the native validation to fail if 
a variable is of those values at runtime.  I pass in a variables.json file 
with matching properties and set those to "" and null as well, with the 
same result.  I've even passed in just a subset of the variables that exist 
in the target template and I don't get anything.  At this point in time, 
I'm using V1.3.1 but I had the same results with previous versions.  
My main goal is to have packer validate that the variable is empty and fail 
vs it just going through with a blank value and things not working out as 
expected..

The documentation for packer validate shows this, which leads me to believe 
that if I force a value to null it will trigger an errror:
"If the default value is null, then the user variable will be *required*. 
This means that the user must specify a value for this variable or template 
validation will fail."

Here is an example of one of the things I've tried.  Please let me know 
what I'm doing wrong, it's driving me a bit nutty. :)

--- variables.json content being passed in as a file (some values left 
blank on purpose and one property is left out.  A mix of empty strings and 
nulls)---

{
    "aws_access_key":"11111111111",
    "aws_secret_key":"111111111",
    "ssh_keypair_name":"",
    "ssh_private_key_file":null,
    "destination_ami_name": ""
}



--- variables in packer.json template (A mix of empty strings and nulls)---

"variables": 
{
    "aws_access_key":"",
    "aws_secret_key":"",
    "ssh_keypair_name":null,
    "ssh_private_key_file":"",
    "destination_ami_name": "",
    "source_ami_name": null
},


Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

J

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