cayleygraph/cayley · error

unexpected int size: %d

Error message

unexpected int size: %d

What it means

asInt64 decodes a fixed 8-byte little-endian int64 value stored in the KV-backed quadstore. Empty bytes are treated as a sentinel returning the caller-provided 'empty' default, but any other length that is not exactly 8 bytes cannot be a stored int64, so the function rejects it. This guards against corrupted or wrong-encoding data in the underlying key-value database.

Source

Thrown at graph/kv/quadstore.go:291

		if err == kv.ErrNotFound {
			return ErrNoBucket
		} else if err != nil {
			return err
		}
		vers, err = asInt64(val, 0)
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
		return nil
	})
	return vers, err
}

func asInt64(b []byte, empty int64) (int64, error) {
	if len(b) == 0 {
		return empty, nil
	} else if len(b) != 8 {
		return 0, fmt.Errorf("unexpected int size: %d", len(b))
	}
	v := int64(binary.LittleEndian.Uint64(b))
	return v, nil
}

func (qs *QuadStore) horizon(ctx context.Context) int64 {
	h, _ := qs.getMetaInt(ctx, "horizon")
	return h
}

func (qs *QuadStore) ValuesOf(ctx context.Context, vals []graph.Ref) ([]quad.Value, error) {
	out := make([]quad.Value, len(vals))
	var (
		inds  []int
		irefs []uint64
	)
	for i, v := range vals {
		if v == nil {

View on GitHub (pinned to 81dcd7d73e)

Solutions

1. Check that the database was created by the same version of the library and was not written with a different encoding
2. Verify database integrity or rebuild the store by re-importing the source data into a fresh database
3. Inspect the offending key's value length to confirm corruption before further use
4. Restore from a known-good backup of the KV database

Example fix

// before: reading raw bytes without validation
v, err := asInt64(raw, 0)
// after: guard length before decoding
if len(raw) != 0 && len(raw) != 8 {
    return 0, fmt.Errorf("unexpected int size: %d", len(raw))
}
v, err := asInt64(raw, 0)

if len(raw) != 0 && len(raw) != 8 {
    return fmt.Errorf("value not an 8-byte int64: %d bytes", len(raw))
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling QuadStore horizon/counter accessors (e.g. via QuadStore internals that call asInt64) when the value bytes read from the KV store are not exactly 8 bytes long — typically because the key holds differently encoded data, the value was written by another version of the store with a different encoding, or the database is corrupted/truncated.

Common situations: Opening a database written by an incompatible Cayley/kv schema version; manual edits or corruption of the Bolt/badger DB file; a truncated value due to an interrupted write; pointing the quadstore at a KV bucket written by a different tool.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

• varint: overflow
• ErrNoBucket
• ErrEmptyPath
• kv: data version is out of date. Run cayleyupgrade for your
• cannot decode indexes: %v

AI-assisted analysis of cayleygraph/cayley@81dcd7d73e (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9a17e86dcc80b9db. Report an issue: GitHub.