Error trying to set variable

[jhdempsey86]

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Discussion Details

I have the following GitHub action which is trying to check the version number in two different branches, and compare them, just to check i updated the version number of my DLL before I do a pull request back into my main branch.

name: Check Assembly Version on PR

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened]

env:
  SOURCE_VERSION: 0
  BASE_VERSION: 0
  
jobs:
  check-version:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Source branch
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          ref: ${{ github.head_ref }}

      - name: Get Source version xyz
        id: get_source_version
        run: |
          SOURCE_VERSION=$(grep -oP 'AssemblyVersion\("\K[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+' ./AutotagShared/Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs)
          echo "Source version: $SOURCE_VERSION"
          echo "source_version2=$SOURCE_VERSION" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
          
      - name: Checkout Base branch
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          ref: ${{ github.base_ref }}
          
      - name: Get base branch version x
        id: get_base_version
        run: |          
          BASE_VERSION=$(grep -oP 'AssemblyVersion\("\K[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+' ./AutotagShared/Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs)
          echo "Base version: $BASE_VERSION"
          echo "bv2=$BASE_VERSION" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"

      - name: Compare versions
        run: |          
          echo "🔍 Comparing source version ( $source_version2 ) with base/head version ( $bv2 )..."

          # Convert versions to comparable integers
          source_num=$(echo $source_version2 | awk -F. '{ printf("%d%03d%03d%03d", $1,$2,$3,$4) }')
          base_num=$(echo $bv2 | awk -F. '{ printf("%d%03d%03d%03d", $1,$2,$3,$4) }')

          echo "🔍 Comparing converted source version ( $source_version2 ) with base/head version ( $base_version2 )..."

          if [ "$source_num" -le "$base_num" ]; then
            echo "❌ Source version must be greater than base branch version. $source_num > $base_num"
            exit 1
          else
            echo "✅ Source version number is valid."
          fi

The code to extract the "source" version number is working fine, but the code to extract the base branch version number throws an error "Unable to process file command 'env' successfully. Invalid Format '0.0.1.10'

Any idea why this is? The code and syntax is the same as what i used the get the version number from the source branch, so I'm stuck as to why it doesn't work for the base branch.

Any help appreciated!

[luddthree]

This issue is happening because you’re trying to write the version number (like 0.0.1.10) to the GitHub Actions environment using this line:

echo "bv2=$BASE_VERSION" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
And GitHub Actions doesn’t allow dots (.) in unquoted environment variable values that look like numbers — it interprets them incorrectly when processing the $GITHUB_ENV file.

That's why this works fine:

echo "source_version2=$SOURCE_VERSION" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
But then fails later with:

echo "bv2=$BASE_VERSION" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
because 0.0.1.10 is parsed incorrectly.

Fix
Wrap the value in double quotes when appending to $GITHUB_ENV:

echo "bv2="$BASE_VERSION"" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
Do the same for the other one too, just to be safe:

echo "source_version2="$SOURCE_VERSION"" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
This will treat it as a string, avoiding GitHub’s command processing from choking on the version format.

Let me know if you want a cleaner way to compare versions using sort -V instead of numeric formatting,

[github-actions[bot]]

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