heredoc example is wrong

[davidmaxwaterman]

Code of Conduct

• I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct

What article on docs.github.com is affected?

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/workflow-commands-for-github-actions#example-2

What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?

      echo 'JSON_RESPONSE<<EOF' >> $GITHUB_ENV
      curl https://example.lab >> $GITHUB_ENV
      echo 'EOF' >> $GITHUB_ENV

It doesn't seem to work. IINM, it's missing an = and the technique is flawed anyway (setting an env doesn't read from stdin, nor a heredoc).

It should be something like the following - cat reads from stdin/heredoc, and it needs to be executed in a subshell, hence $():

      echo 'JSON_RESPONSE=$(cat <<EOF' >> $GITHUB_ENV
      curl https://example.lab >> $GITHUB_ENV
      echo 'EOF' >> $GITHUB_ENV
      echo ')' >> $GITHUB_ENV

The poweshell example might well need some similar TLC (I have no experience of powershell, but it seems like it uses some kind of @'....'@ syntax.

Ref:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1167746/how-to-assign-a-heredoc-value-to-a-variable-in-bash#answer-1167849
https://4sysops.com/archives/the-powershell-here-string-preserve-text-formatting/

Additional information

No response

[welcome]

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[github-actions]

Thanks for opening an issue! We've triaged this issue for technical review by a subject matter expert 👀

[github-actions]

This is a gentle bump for the docs team that this issue is waiting for technical review.

[ethomson]

Hi @davidmaxwaterman - I'm not sure that I understand entirely. The GITHUB_ENV file is not parsed by the shell, it uses either NAME=value format or the multiline NAME<<DELIMITER format, which will read up until DELIMITER is encountered on a bare line.

You should see that this snippet of a job:

      - run: |
          echo "MULTI_LINE<<EOF" >> $GITHUB_ENV
          echo "line one" >> $GITHUB_ENV
          echo "line two" >> $GITHUB_ENV
          echo "EOF" >> $GITHUB_ENV
      - run: |
          env

produces the following output:

...
MULTI_LINE=line one
line two
...

[github-actions]

This is a gentle bump for the docs team that this issue is waiting for technical review.

[lucascosti]

It appears that the current docs are correct, so I'll close this issue.