Ubuntu – Can the 'startsWith' function in GitHub Actions handle a list of strings?

The startsWith function in GitHub Actions does not handle a list of strings.
It is designed to check if a single string starts with another specified string.

You are using the endsWith function, but it operates under a similar principle as startsWith, checking if a single string ends with a specified substring.

The current approach of using endsWith to check if any of the changed files end with a specific extension (e.g., .py, .sh, yaml) will not work as intended since needs.changed_files.outputs.all_changed_files is a single string containing a space-separated list of all changed files, and endsWith will only check the end of this entire string.

A better approach would be to use a shell command to process the list of changed files and determine if any of the files have the desired extension:

name: Lint Changed Files

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  changed_files:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - name: Get list of added and modified files
        id: changed-files
        uses: tj-actions/changed-files@v39

      - name: Echo changed files
        run: |
          echo "Changed Files: ${{ steps.changed-files.outputs.all_changed_files }}" 

  lint:
    needs: [changed_files]
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Check for Python files
      id: check-python
      run: |
        echo "::set-output name=python::$(echo "${{ needs.changed_files.outputs.all_changed_files }}" | grep -q \.py && echo true || echo false)"
    
    - name: Lint Python scripts
      if: steps.check-python.outputs.python == 'true'
      run: |
        pip install flake8
        echo "${{ needs.changed_files.outputs.all_changed_files }}" | tr ' ' 'n' | grep \.py$ | xargs flake8

    - name: Check for Shell files
      id: check-shell
      run: |
        echo "::set-output name=shell::$(echo "${{ needs.changed_files.outputs.all_changed_files }}" | grep -q \.sh && echo true || echo false)"
    
    - name: Lint shell scripts
      if: steps.check-shell.outputs.shell == 'true'
      run: |
        sudo apt-get install shellcheck
        echo "${{ needs.changed_files.outputs.all_changed_files }}" | tr ' ' 'n' | grep \.sh$ | xargs shellcheck
    
    - name: Check for YAML files
      id: check-yaml
      run: |
        echo "::set-output name=yaml::$(echo "${{ needs.changed_files.outputs.all_changed_files }}" | grep -q \.y[a]?ml && echo true || echo false)"

    - name: Lint YAML files
      if: steps.check-yaml.outputs.yaml == 'true'
      run: |
        pip install yamllint
        echo "${{ needs.changed_files.outputs.all_changed_files }}" | tr ' ' 'n' | grep \.y[a]?ml$ | xargs yamllint

You would now have separate steps added, to check for the presence of files with each of the desired extensions.
These steps use the grep command to search for the extensions in the list of changed files, and set an output variable to true if any files with the extension are found.
The if conditions for the linting steps have been updated to check these output variables, so the linting steps will only run if there are files with the corresponding extensions among the changed files.