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We typically try to avoid making subjective, boasty claims in our documentation in recent times, but there remained both some older documentation that we've not recently revised and also some newer examples that are, in retrospect, also perhaps more "boasty" than they need to be. We prefer not to use this sort of boasty language because not everyone using Terraform has the same background and experience, and so what is "easy" or "intuitive" to one person may not be so to another person, and that should not suggest that the second person is in any way wrong or inadequate. In reviewing some of our use of the word "easy" here I tried as much as possible to surgically revise the existing content without getting drawn into a big rewrite, but in some cases the content was either pretty unsalvageable (due to talking about obsolete features that were removed long ago) or required some broader changes to make the result hopefully still get the same facts across. In those cases I've both removed some content entirely or adjusted larger paragraphs. This was not an exhaustive review and so I'm sure there's still plenty of room for similar improvements elsewhere. I also resisted the urge to update some pages that contain outdated information about currently-active features.
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| layout | page_title | sidebar_current | description |
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| commands-state | Command: state | docs-commands-state-index | The `terraform state` command is used for advanced state management. |
State Command
The terraform state command is used for advanced state management.
As your Terraform usage becomes more advanced, there are some cases where
you may need to modify the Terraform state.
Rather than modify the state directly, the terraform state commands can
be used in many cases instead.
This command is a nested subcommand, meaning that it has further subcommands. These subcommands are listed to the left.
Usage
Usage: terraform state <subcommand> [options] [args]
Please click a subcommand to the left for more information.
Remote State
The Terraform state subcommands all work with remote state just as if it was local state. Reads and writes may take longer than normal as each read and each write do a full network roundtrip. Otherwise, backups are still written to disk and the CLI usage is the same as if it were local state.
Backups
All terraform state subcommands that modify the state write backup
files. The path of these backup file can be controlled with -backup.
Subcommands that are read-only (such as list) do not write any backup files since they aren't modifying the state.
Note that backups for state modification can not be disabled. Due to the sensitivity of the state file, Terraform forces every state modification command to write a backup file. You'll have to remove these files manually if you don't want to keep them around.
Command-Line Friendly
The output and command-line structure of the state subcommands is designed to be usable with Unix command-line tools such as grep, awk, and similar PowerShell commands.
For advanced filtering and modification, we recommend piping Terraform state subcommands together with other command line tools.