If condition are always evaluated as true when containing expression syntax inside

Describe the bug An if condition in a step definition that includes expression syntax in condition body is always evaluated as false positive or is ignored.

Example workflow: https://github.com/dlavrenuek/test-workflow-if-condition/blob/master/.github/workflows/test.yml

name: test if conditions

on:
  push:
    branches: [master, test]

env:
  TEST_BRANCH: "test"
  EMPTY_VALUE: ""

jobs:
  test-conditions:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: simple evaluation on master
        if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/master'
        run: echo "runs"

      - name: simple evaluation on test
        if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/test'
        run: echo "runs"

      - name: false positive with expression syntac evaluation
        if: github.ref == 'refs/head/${{ env.TEST_BRANCH }}' # this condition is ignored or is evaluated as false positive
        run: echo "runs"

      - name: false positive with expression syntac evaluation
        if: false && '${{ env.EMPTY_VALUE }}' # this condition is ignored or is evaluated as false positive
        run: echo "runs"

Example run: https://github.com/dlavrenuek/test-workflow-if-condition/runs/2914408827?check_suite_focus=true

Example step definition:

      - name: false positive with expression syntax evaluation
        if: github.ref == 'refs/head/${{ env.TEST_BRANCH }}'
        run: echo "runs"

In the example workflow the last two steps should not have been run, but they were

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. create a workflow
2. add an if condition with expression syntax ${{ ... }} as part of the condition (not wrapping the whole condition)
3. trigger the workflow

Expected behavior

• The if condition should be correctly evaluated.
• In case that the expression syntax is not supported as part of an if condition - an error should be thrown instead of silently ignoring it.

Runner Version and Platform

GitHub platform

What’s not working?

The steps are executed because of false positive evaluation of he if condition containing expression syntax

[BuckinghamIO]

How can this still be an issue almost a year on? Kinda disappointed really as this is quite a fundamental part.

[raghuvarmabh]

I fixed like this