Terraform - Data Types

Data Types in Terraform

Each variable in Terraform will have a value and that value will be of specific type. That type specifies exactly the kind of data a variable can store and these types are as listed below and are categorized into

1. Primitive types - number, string, bool
2. Complex/Structural/Collection types - list, tuple, set, map, object
3. There is one special value that has no type - null, which represents an absence or omission

Below are the list of types

• number - a numeric value which can represent both 

1. whole numbers - 1, -1, 3
2. fractional value - 3.14

• string - a sequence of Unicode characters representing some text, like "hello".
• bool - a Boolean value, either "true" or "false".
• list - 
• to store multiple values/elements within a pair of square brackets separated by comma. 
• All values must be of same type(either string or numbers). and duplicates are allowed.
• E.g. animals = ["dog", "tiger", "cat", "dog"] 
• A good example would be AWS Instance types. 
• Values/elements of list are accessed using indexes. E.g. listname[0], listname[1]
• set - same as list type. A collection of unordered unique (no duplicates) values.
• tuple - to store multiple values within a pair of square brackets separated by comma. All values can be of different types. However, here the values must be ordered. A good example would be list of IP addresses
• map - a group of key-value pairs within a pair of curly/flower brackets {}. The key-value pairs can be separated by either a comma or a line break. The keys in key-value pair in the map must be strings and unique.
• object - a structural type that can contain different/all types of variable values e.g. 
• details of student 

                student
                {
                name  = <value> 

                email  = <value>

                age     = <value>

                } 

• null - represented by unquoted symbol null

Elements in a list can be identified with consecutive whole numbers, starting with zero.