Terraform-Associate-004 Exam Dumps - HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (004) (HCTA0-004)

While terraform destroy is a common way to remove infrastructure, it isnot the only way.

You can also remove resources bydeleting them from the configuration and running terraform apply.

Manually deleting resources in the cloud provider can also remove infrastructure (but Terraform won’t be aware unless the state is updated).

Official Terraform Documentation Reference:

terraform destroy - HashiCorp Documentation

This is the command that lets you experiment with Terraform expressions, by providing an interactive console that allows you to evaluate expressions and see their results. You can use this command to test your expressions before using them in your configuration files.

Rationale for Correct Answer: terraform plan creates and displays an execution plan showing what Terraform would change, add, or destroy to reach the desired state—this is the standard preview step before applying changes.

Analysis of Incorrect Options (Distractors):

A: terraform show displays a human-readable view of an existing state or plan file; it doesn’t compute proposed changes by itself.

C: terraform validate checks configuration syntax and internal consistency, not proposed infrastructure changes.

D: terraform get downloads modules; it doesn’t preview infrastructure changes.

Key Concept: Previewing changes with plan in the Terraform workflow.

Setting the TF_LOG environment variable to DEBUG causes debug messages to be logged into stdout, along with other log levels such as TRACE, INFO, WARN, and ERROR. This can be useful for troubleshooting or debugging purposes.

This will enable additional logging messages to find out from which paths Terraform is loading providers referenced in your Terraform configuration files, as it will set the log level to TRACE, which is the most verbose and detailed level.

Rationale for Correct Answer: Terraform logging is controlled via environment variables. TF_LOG sets the verbosity (e.g., DEBUG), and TF_LOG_PATH directs Terraform to write those logs to a specified file path. This is part of Terraform CLI troubleshooting and operational usage.

Analysis of Incorrect Options (Distractors):

B (Update the Terraform CLI configuration file): The CLI config can control some behaviors (credentials helpers, plugin cache, etc.), but log-to-file is specifically handled by TF_LOG_PATH.

C (Add a path argument to the terraform block): The terraform block configures required versions, required providers, and backends—not CLI logging output.

D (Run the terraform output command): terraform output displays output values from state; it has nothing to do with logging.

Key Concept: Terraform debugging and logging via environment variables (TF_LOG, TF_LOG_PATH).

A module cannot always refer to all variables declared in its parent module, as it needs to explicitly declare input variables and assign values to them from the parent module’s arguments. A module cannot access the parent module’s variables directly, unless they are passed as input arguments.

This is a secure way to inject sensitive variables into your Terraform run, as they will not be stored in any file or source code repository. You can also use environment variables or variable files with encryption to pass sensitive variables to Terraform.