gohugoio/hugo · error

is not a valid duration unit

Error message

%q is not a valid duration unit

What it means

Thrown by time.Duration when the unit string is not in the allowed set: nanosecond/ns, microsecond/us/µs, millisecond/ms, second/s, minute/m, hour/h. The lookup map durationUnits rejects anything else, printing the offending unit via %q.

Solutions

1. Use one of the supported units exactly: ns, us, µs, ms, s, m, h, or the full names.
2. For plural intent, use the singular full name ('second', 'minute').
3. If you need a Go duration string like '5m30s', use time.ParseDuration via the Duration function's other overload instead.

Example fix

// before:
{{ time.Duration "sec" 5 }}
// after:
{{ time.Duration "second" 5 }}

{{ $validUnits := slice "ns" "us" "µs" "ms" "s" "m" "h" }}
{{ if in $validUnits $unit }}{{ time.Duration $unit $n }}{{ else }}0{{ end }}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling {{ time.Duration "sec" 5 }} or any unit not in the allowed set. The function casts unit to string then checks the map; a miss raises this error before the numeric conversion.

Common situations: Using pluralized units ('seconds', 'minutes'), abbreviations outside the set ('sec', 'min'), or passing a non-unit string by mistake. Also seen when the unit variable is nil/empty.

Related errors

• cannot convert to time.Duration
• config needs a filename
• format not supported
• 'increment' must be > 0
• 'increment' must be < 0

AI-assisted analysis of gohugoio/hugo@52c9bd7908 (2026-08-09). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d384f635c32c96c7. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at tpl/time/time.go:143

	"ms":          time.Millisecond,
	"second":      time.Second,
	"s":           time.Second,
	"minute":      time.Minute,
	"m":           time.Minute,
	"hour":        time.Hour,
	"h":           time.Hour,
}

// Duration converts the given number to a time.Duration.
// Unit is one of nanosecond/ns, microsecond/us/µs, millisecond/ms, second/s, minute/m or hour/h.
func (ns *Namespace) Duration(unit any, number any) (time.Duration, error) {
	unitStr, err := cast.ToStringE(unit)
	if err != nil {
		return 0, err
	}
	unitDuration, found := durationUnits[unitStr]
	if !found {
		return 0, fmt.Errorf("%q is not a valid duration unit", unit)
	}
	n, err := cast.ToInt64E(number)
	if err != nil {
		return 0, err
	}
	return time.Duration(n) * unitDuration, nil
}

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