cannot supply extra formatting options to the pretty templat

Error message

cannot supply extra formatting options to the pretty template

What it means

Raised by `docker node inspect` when the --format value starts with 'pretty' but is not exactly 'pretty'. The pretty output is a fixed human-readable template, so appending Go-template directives to it is unsupported and rejected before any API call.

Source

Thrown at cli/command/node/inspect.go:65

	apiClient := dockerCLI.Client()

	if opts.pretty {
		opts.format = "pretty"
	}

	getRef := func(ref string) (any, []byte, error) {
		nodeRef, err := Reference(ctx, apiClient, ref)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, nil, err
		}
		res, err := apiClient.NodeInspect(ctx, nodeRef, client.NodeInspectOptions{})
		return res.Node, res.Raw, err
	}

	// check if the user is trying to apply a template to the pretty format, which
	// is not supported
	if strings.HasPrefix(opts.format, "pretty") && opts.format != "pretty" {
		return errors.New("cannot supply extra formatting options to the pretty template")
	}

	nodeCtx := formatter.Context{
		Output: dockerCLI.Out(),
		Format: newFormat(opts.format, false),
	}

	if err := inspectFormatWrite(nodeCtx, opts.nodeIds, getRef); err != nil {
		return cli.StatusError{StatusCode: 1, Status: err.Error()}
	}
	return nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to e9452d6e78)

Solutions

Use --format pretty (or the --pretty flag) alone for the human-readable view
Use a pure Go template for custom output, e.g. --format '{{.ID}} {{.Status.State}}'
Drop --format entirely to get raw JSON and post-process with jq

Example fix

# before
docker node inspect --format 'pretty {{.ID}}' node1
# after
docker node inspect --format '{{.ID}}' node1   # or: --format pretty

When it happens

Trigger: `docker node inspect --format 'pretty{{.ID}}' mynode` or any --format string with the 'pretty' prefix plus extra text; combining --pretty semantics with a custom template.

Common situations: Users trying to tweak the pretty output with template fields; scripts concatenating format fragments onto 'pretty'; confusion between --pretty flag and --format template.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of docker/cli@e9452d6e78 (2026-08-01). Data as JSON: /data/errors/7bb4174e5bcb3e89.json. Report an issue: GitHub.