Scenario outline Table Value is Getting Cloned on Each Run

[pgundlupetvenkatesh]

Describe the bug
Scenario Outline table value gets appended to the previous iteration value when the table values are same using << operator

To Reproduce
Feature file -

Feature: Testing City Names

  Scenario Outline:
    And I live in '<city>' City
    And I am not from '<city>'

    Examples:
      | city       |
      | Sacramento |
      | Sacramento |

Step Definition file -

And 'I live in {string} City' do |city|
  city << ' City'
  puts "#{city}"
end

And /^I am not from '(.+)'$/ do |city|
  city << ' city'
  puts "#{city}"
end

gemfile -

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'cucumber', '~> 6.1.0'

Expected behavior
Should be
loop 1

I live in Sacramento City
I am not from Sacramento city

loop 2

I live in Sacramento City
I am not from Sacramento city

Context & Motivation
This fails Cucumber feature plans in our automation suite. To fix it right now we are updating << with += but would be great to have << working to append strings.

Screenshots

Your Environment

• Versions used: Cucumber 6.1.0 and Ruby 2.6.4
• Operating System and version: Windows 10 64bit

Additional context
When Cucumber is downgraded to 6.0.0 << does not clone/append strings and works fine
When I use Cucumber Expressions in step definition I can't reproduce the issue it's only when I use regular expression.
And when table values are not same this issue cannot be reproduced

[mattwynne]

This feels related to #1532, but I might be wrong.

IMO either we need to freeze the argument (so you get an error trying to call << on it) or we need to copy it for each step match.

[mattwynne]

@pgundlupetvenkatesh thanks for such a concise and clear bug report! Are you interested in helping to fix this?

You can book a pairing session with me at https://calendly.com/mattwynne or you can come and find us in https://cucumber.io/community#slack in the #committers if you want to chat.

[pgundlupetvenkatesh]

@mattwynne you 're welcome. I am pretty occupied with work right now so maybe some other time.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed in two months if no further activity occurs.