Ansible shell module fails and errors on AiX system - shell

Question

Below is my playbook having a shell module:
Note: mypid variable is the process id of a process running on target host.
- shell: |
if [ -z {{tm}} ]; then mypid="wrongpid"; else mypid= {{tm}}; fi;
if [ ! -e /proc/$mypid/status ]; then exit 1; fi
istat {{fn}} | grep -i Modif | cut -d' ' -f3,4,5,6
vars:
fn: "/proc/{{ mypid }}/status"
tm: "{{ mypid }}"
tags: always
ignore_errors: yes
register: starttime
This worked fine on Linux systems. On AiX though this shell module fails with the below error:
TASK [shell] *******************************************************************
[1;30mtask path: /app/playbook/startstop.yml:318[0m
[0;31mfatal: [10.9.9.131]: FAILED! => {"changed": true, "cmd": "if [ -z 12386652 ]; then mypid=\"wrongpid\"; else mypid= 12386652; fi;\nif [ ! -e /proc/$mypid/status ]; then exit 1; fi\nistat /proc/12386652/status | grep -i Modif | cut -d' ' -f3,4,5,6\n", "delta": "0:00:00.108227", "end": "2019-11-21 14:09:35.064768", "msg": "non-zero return code", "rc": 1, "start": "2019-11-21 14:09:34.956541", "stderr": "/bin/sh: 12386652: not found.", "stderr_lines": ["/bin/sh: 12386652: not found."], "stdout": "", "stdout_lines": []}[0m
[0;36m...ignoring[0m
I added the below shell args but still the error remains:
args:
executable: /bin/ksh
Running the shell on the target server as a shell script also works fine. Don't know why is is failing in the ansible playbook.
Kindly suggest.

Answer 1

You have an extra space in your shell var assignment expression causing sh to try to execute a command rather that assigning the var:
else mypid= {{tm}} => else mypid={{tm}}
Moreover, you should secure the entire expression a bit to make sure you don't get other surprises (with empty params for example...)
# before
if [ -z {{tm}} ]; then mypid="wrongpid"; else mypid= {{tm}}; fi;
# after
if [ -z "{{tm}}" ]; then mypid="wrongpid"; else mypid="{{tm}}"; fi;