crowdsecurity/crowdsec · error

long1 is not a float : %v

Error message

long1 is not a float : %v

What it means

The Distance expr helper parses all four coordinate arguments as float64 strings. This error is thrown when the long1 (first longitude) argument cannot be parsed by strconv.ParseFloat; the helper logs a warning and returns (0.0, error).

Source

Thrown at pkg/exprhelpers/helpers.go:402

// func Distance(lat1 string, long1 string, lat2 string, long2 string) (float64, error) {
func Distance(params ...any) (any, error) {
	lat1 := params[0].(string)
	long1 := params[1].(string)
	lat2 := params[2].(string)
	long2 := params[3].(string)

	lat1f, err := strconv.ParseFloat(lat1, 64)
	if err != nil {
		log.Warningf("lat1 is not a float : %v", err)

		return 0.0, fmt.Errorf("lat1 is not a float : %v", err)
	}

	long1f, err := strconv.ParseFloat(long1, 64)
	if err != nil {
		log.Warningf("long1 is not a float : %v", err)

		return 0.0, fmt.Errorf("long1 is not a float : %v", err)
	}

	lat2f, err := strconv.ParseFloat(lat2, 64)
	if err != nil {
		log.Warningf("lat2 is not a float : %v", err)

		return 0.0, fmt.Errorf("lat2 is not a float : %v", err)
	}

	long2f, err := strconv.ParseFloat(long2, 64)
	if err != nil {
		log.Warningf("long2 is not a float : %v", err)

		return 0.0, fmt.Errorf("long2 is not a float : %v", err)
	}

	// either set of coordinates is 0,0, return 0 to avoid FPs
	if (lat1f == 0.0 && long1f == 0.0) || (lat2f == 0.0 && long2f == 0.0) {

View on GitHub (pinned to 909b515798)

Solutions

1. Pass long1 as a plain decimal string such as "2.3522".
2. Normalize/cleanse the longitude field in the parser (strip symbols, convert commas) before Distance is evaluated.
3. Add a numeric precondition in the expression so Distance is only called with valid coordinates.
4. Check that the GeoIP enrichment actually ran and populated the field; empty strings always fail ParseFloat.

Example fix

// before
Distance(lat, "2.3522°", lat2, long2)
// after
Distance(lat, "2.3522", lat2, long2)

if _, err := strconv.ParseFloat(long1, 64); err != nil {
	// skip Distance call
}

func isFloat(s string) bool {
	_, err := strconv.ParseFloat(s, 64)
	return err == nil
}

expr: use isNumeric(long1) in the condition guarding the Distance call; treat its error return as 'unknown distance', not 0

When it happens

Trigger: Calling exprhelpers.Distance where long1 is non-numeric — empty string, "2.3522E" (truncated exponent), "2,3522", or a field holding a placeholder like "unknown".

Common situations: GeoIP enrichment that produced empty or sentinel longitude values; CSV-sourced numbers with comma decimals; fields concatenated with units ("2.3522°").

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

• lat1 is not a float : %v
• lat2 is not a float : %v
• long2 is not a float : %v
• unable to parse time
• unable to parse duration

AI-assisted analysis of crowdsecurity/crowdsec@909b515798 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/690869443b472f03. Report an issue: GitHub.