Error() call not returning the curl string as expected

[sanjan]

vault/api/output_string.go

Line 37 in 79ed357

return ErrOutputStringRequest

This call always returns the constant value: "output a string, please"

[hghaf099]

Thank you for filing this issue and welcome to the Vault community. Would you please elaborate the issue a bit more with a clear reproducing steps? Note that to see the equivalent API call to perform the same operation as the CLI command, you can use the -output-curl-string flag after the subcommand as pointed out here. I hope this helps!

[sanjan]

@hghaf099 there is no return call for the variable: finalCurlString , so calling Error() method always returns the constant string: ErrOutputStringRequest

[raskchanky]

Hi @sanjan! Thanks for reaching out. You've uncovered an interesting area of the code that's quite confusing. I confess that before reading this issue, I didn't fully understand how -output-curl-string actually worked. The tl;dr is that although it's confusing, it's correct the way it is. I've opened #28576 which contains some additional comments that explains in more detail why it is the way it is. Thanks for bringing this area of confusion to our attention!