How to use declared variables in when conditional step? - jenkins

Question

I am declaring a variable outside the pipeline tags and initializing in one of the stages inside script using readFile. When I try to use this declared variable inside when condition, the when condition always skips.
When I initialize the variable with var1='myValue' and check for
when{ expression{var1=='myValue'} } works .
I tried making the varible into environment variable but not else works
def test1=''
pipeline{
agent { label 'local'}
stages{
stage('initialization'){
steps{
sh """echo "myValue" > user_file
pwd
"""
script{
test1=readFile file: 'user_file
//env.TEST=readFile file: 'user_file', encoding: 'UTF-8' doesn't work
//test1='myValue' only this works
}
}
}
stage('test'){
when {
expression { return test1 == 'myValue'}
//environment name: 'TEST', value: 'myValue'
}
steps{
echo " user :${env.TEST}"
//this step always gets skipped because of when condition above
}
}
}
}
I expect the steps under when to run, but it gets skips every time.

Answer 1

As Matt commented on the question, I had a new line character in the file. The new line character was introduced by echo by default. I had to suppress it using the -n option from echo.
echo -n "myValue" > user_file
The above command only puts the value without the newline in the file
Sorry that my shell-foo is bad and didn't realize that echo puts in a new line by default.