How to check if a variable doesn't start with a certain string in GitHub yaml file

In my yaml file I can check if a variable starts with a string by doing the following:

- name: Testing negation of startsWith
  if: startsWith(env.BRANCH_NAME, 'dog')
  run: echo "This job is dog"
  shell: cmd

I want to do something like this in Github in my yaml file to check if a variable doesn't start with a certain string except doing something like this will give a red line under cat saying tag suffix cannot contain flow indicator characters.

- name: Testing negation of startsWith
   if: !(startsWith(env.BRANCH_NAME, 'cat'))
   run: echo "This job is not a cat"
   shell: cmd

I also tried doing the following but it says Unrecognized function: 'not'

- name: Testing negation of startsWith
  if: not (startsWith(env.BRANCH_NAME, 'cat'))
  run: echo "This job is not a cat"
  shell: cmd

There should be an easy way to check if a variable doesn't start with a certain value given that checking for the positive case exists.

Solution

you can use the following syntax instead of wrapping the condition in quotes:

if: ${{ !startsWith(env.BRANCH_NAME, 'cat') }}

This will avoid linter errors