I don't understand this.<p>If you need to iterate over the items you can just use "with_items" or "with_subelements" (<a href="http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_loops.html#looping-over-subelements" rel="nofollow">http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_loops.html#looping...</a>) and the "{{ item }}_12345"<p>If you need a list for a template you can always loop it in the template and access the sublements there and template them as you wish.<p>One of the strong points of Ansible is that it can be read very easily. The moment you do:<p>"{{ important_files | map(attribute='file_name') | list | map('regex_replace','(.*)','\\1_{{ file_suffix }}') | list }}"<p>you throw it away.