Issue: act will parse/evaluate arithmetic context expressions that github wont

[dannystaple]

Act version

$ act --version
act version 0.2.20

Expected behaviour

The code below, which looks viable, is actually invalid. Run within the genuine github workflow context, it will result in invalid reference and not run the whole workflow file. I would expect act to output the same error for the same line.

Actual behaviour

Act will evaluate this expression to the value. This leads to workflows debugged/developed locally that will not run in github.

Workflow and/or repository

The step definition (minimal reproducible):

name: unreal
jobs:
  reproduce:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - env:
          EXPIRY_TIME: ${{ 3 * 24 * 60 * 60 }}
        run: echo ${EXPIRY_TIME}

Steps to reproduce

Run the above in act (eg act push), it will run, and echo that calculated time.
Commit to github (with the right on definition to function) and it will fail.

[github-actions]

Issue is stale and will be closed in 14 days unless there is new activity

[mikemonkers]

I also see this very same issue. It would be nice to align with GitHub or indicate whether GitHub have plans to add support?

[jsoref]

Short of reinventing parsing, I can't imagine a good way of handling this. Under the hood, act creates a JavaScript VM (Otto):
https://github.com/nektos/act/blob/41b03b581c7aec251dhile96e9a5ea27009542a798d4/pkg/runner/expression.go#L34-L37

It then asks the VM to evaluate the expression.

* could appear in strings, or in comments. At least the former should be legal in GHA. Not sure about the latter.

While I can understand getting bitten by this edge 😦, I'd hate to have to try to write a fix for it 😨.

(There are other nearby edges that I do want to fix...)

[github-actions]

Issue is stale and will be closed in 14 days unless there is new activity

[ZauberNerd]

This has been fixed with: #908 and will be released with the next version.
If you want to try it out earlier, use one of the snapshots: https://github.com/nektos/act/actions/runs/1653750680 or install / build from master: https://github.com/nektos/act#go-linuxwindowsmacosany-other-platform-supported-by-go https://github.com/nektos/act#manually-building-from-source