How do you read data from an absolute file path?

[TheOnlyWei]

How do you read external static files? I want to read the SSH public key from the default SSH key location on windows.

If I call this:

param test string = loadTextContent('C:\<insert home path>\.ssh\id_rsa.pub')

I get these errors:

The value must be a compile-time constant.bicep[BCP032](https://aka.ms/bicep/core-diagnostics#BCP032)
The specified escape sequence is not recognized. Only the following escape sequences are allowed: "\$", "\'", "\\", "\n", "\r", "\t", "\u{...}".bicep[BCP006](https://aka.ms/bicep/core-diagnostics#BCP006)

If I change to forward slash, I get this error.

The specified file path contains one ore more invalid path characters. The following are not permitted: """, "*", ":", "<", ">", "?", "\", "|".bicep[BCP085](https://aka.ms/bicep/core-diagnostics#BCP085)

So, it looks like Bicep thinks : is not a valid path character. All of this is very confusing as a new bicep user as correct usage is nowhere to be found. Are absolute paths supported? I only see examples of relative paths. Tried Copilot and Copilot keeps giving the wrong code as well, including paths with : character.

If I escape the :, I get the first error:

param test string = loadTextContent('C\:/<insert home path>/.ssh/id_rsa.pub')

The value must be a compile-time constant.bicep[BCP032](https://aka.ms/bicep/core-diagnostics#BCP032)

Does everything need to be hard-coded in Bicep? So, if we want to read static files, we need to write a Bicep parser to inject content into parameter files?

[jeskew]

Bicep uses / as the path delimiter regardless of platform. Absolute paths are not supported, but you can use ../ sequences to navigate wherever is needed.

[TheOnlyWei]

This should be noted in the function documentation since otherwise there is no way anyone could know absolute paths are not supported. This is what the function documentation currently looks like:

function loadTextContent(filePath: string, [encoding: 'iso-8859-1' | 'us-ascii' | 'utf-16' | 'utf-16BE' | 'utf-8']): string
Loads the content of the specified file into a string. Content loading occurs during compilation, not at runtime. The maximum allowed content size is 131072 characters (including line endings).

Nothing says filePath cannot be an absolute path or must use /.