Question: Double quote escape for variable substitution does not seem to work in github action?

[steven-xufan]

I was following the Tips and Tricks page to do variable substitution yq e ".a.b = \"$myvalue\"" file.yaml and it works locally in the command line. However I am having some issue to get it work with Github Action.

Example
I created a simple yaml and workflow file here.
I am just trying to replace a value in yml file with:

cmd: >
  yq eval --inplace ".bar.tag = \"${ABC}\"" test.yml

For completeness, test.yml looks like this:

foo: a
bar:
  tag: xxx
c: c

And it fails with the following. The log can also accessed here.

/usr/bin/docker run --name cc49561edb686f734b47adbd13252d2f99bd4f_5e9d18 --label cc4956 --workdir /github/workspace --rm -e ABC -e INPUT_CMD -e HOME -e GITHUB_JOB -e GITHUB_REF -e GITHUB_SHA -e GITHUB_REPOSITORY -e GITHUB_REPOSITORY_OWNER -e GITHUB_RUN_ID -e GITHUB_RUN_NUMBER -e GITHUB_RETENTION_DAYS -e GITHUB_ACTOR -e GITHUB_WORKFLOW -e GITHUB_HEAD_REF -e GITHUB_BASE_REF -e GITHUB_EVENT_NAME -e GITHUB_SERVER_URL -e GITHUB_API_URL -e GITHUB_GRAPHQL_URL -e GITHUB_WORKSPACE -e GITHUB_ACTION -e GITHUB_EVENT_PATH -e GITHUB_ACTION_REPOSITORY -e GITHUB_ACTION_REF -e GITHUB_PATH -e GITHUB_ENV -e RUNNER_OS -e RUNNER_TOOL_CACHE -e RUNNER_TEMP -e RUNNER_WORKSPACE -e ACTIONS_RUNTIME_URL -e ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN -e ACTIONS_CACHE_URL -e GITHUB_ACTIONS=true -e CI=true -v "/var/run/docker.sock":"/var/run/docker.sock" -v "/home/runner/work/_temp/_github_home":"/github/home" -v "/home/runner/work/_temp/_github_workflow":"/github/workflow" -v "/home/runner/work/_temp/_runner_file_commands":"/github/file_commands" -v "/home/runner/work/public-test/public-test":"/github/workspace" cc4956:1edb686f734b47adbd13252d2f99bd4f  "yq eval --inplace \".bar.tag = \\"${ABC}\\"\" test.yml
"
/entrypoint.sh: eval: line 1: syntax error: unterminated quoted string
yq eval --inplace ".bar.tag = \${ABC}\" test.yml

The only way I could get this to work is the following. (example commit and workflow log)

yq eval --inplace '.bar.tag = "'${ABC}'"' test.yml

I looked through the code at yq/github-action and it is just passing in the argument.

Am I doing anything wrong? Or is the github action not able to escape \" properly?

[mikefarah]

Perhaps because the github action itself is defined in yaml - it's not escaping properly :/

But yeah, looks right to me.

Next release I'm going to add new env/strenv operators that will mean less escaping confusion (see #642).

[mikefarah]

Try the new env/strenv operators https://mikefarah.gitbook.io/yq/env-variable-operators

[steven-xufan]

that works great. thank you!

[StephanX]

Took me a moment to decipher the documentation, but managed to decipher the env(value) like so:

yq --null-input '.some.value = "abc123"' > file.yaml
my_bash_value="xyz789" 
myYQvalue="${my_bash_value}" yq '.some.value = env(myYQvalue)' file.yaml
some:
  value: xyz789