Use RegEx comparison in Gitlab workflow rules - regex

Question

I'm trying to use a regex comparisons in the workflow:rules section of my gitlab-ci file, but it doesn't seem to be working. Here is a basic version:
stages:
- prep
variables:
VAR1: "no value"
APPURL: "no value"
workflow: #Goal: only run pipeline for push events set some variables based on branch/commit_ref_name
rules:
- if: "CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "push"
- if: "CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME =~ /^dev/
variables:
VAR1: "Dev Value"
APPURL: "https://devurl.com"
test_job:
stage: prep
image: runner.image/url
script:
- echo "$VAR1"
- echo "APPURL"
When push a change from a branch named something like "dev1-jirastory", the test job output says "no value" for both variables. So, its not catching the commit_ref_name rule for some reason.
Can someone tell me if you can use regex comparisons in the workflow:rules statements? All the stuff I've found so far refers to job rules. As I want these variables set for multiple jobs, I want to set them for the entire workflow and subsequent jobs, not use the same rules in every single job, which can grow and not be managable.
I did try accomplishing those value determinations in a root "before_script" section, but that gets overwritten if I need to have to do other actions in a before_script for any individual job, so that won't work for me either.
Lastly, if anyone can tell me if I can do any "command" statements for parsing the commit_ref_name, that would be great. I'd love to do something like:
"$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME" | awk -F "-" '{print $1}')
to pull out the "dev1" portion of the ref name like my sample above for use in jobs as well.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Using variables in workflow works, just a couple of small changes needed for your pipeline:
stages:
- prep
variables:
VAR1: "no value"
APPURL: "no value"
workflow: #Goal: only run pipeline for push events set some variables based on branch/commit_ref_name
rules:
- if: '$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "push"'
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG =~ /^dev/'
variables:
VAR1: "Dev Value"
APPURL: "https://devurl.com"
test_job:
stage: prep
script:
- echo "$VAR1"
- echo "$APPURL"
You where missing the $ before the variables in you rules clauses. And I would recommend to use $CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG instead of CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME to be independent of the case.