mikefarah/yq · error

cannot convert node value [%v] at path %v of tag %v to numbe

Error message

cannot convert node value [%v] at path %v of tag %v to number

What it means

The to_number operator found a scalar whose string value cannot be parsed as an int64 or float64. tryConvertToNumber fails (both parseInt64 and ParseFloat error), so toNumberOperator returns this error including the offending value, its path, and its tag.

Source

Thrown at pkg/yqlib/operator_to_number.go:45

	var results = list.New()

	for el := context.MatchingNodes.Front(); el != nil; el = el.Next() {
		candidate := el.Value.(*CandidateNode)
		if candidate.Kind != ScalarNode {
			return Context{}, fmt.Errorf("cannot convert node at path %v of tag %v to number", candidate.GetNicePath(), candidate.Tag)
		}

		if candidate.Tag == "!!int" || candidate.Tag == "!!float" {
			// it already is a number!
			results.PushBack(candidate)
		} else {
			tag, converted := tryConvertToNumber(candidate.Value)
			if converted {
				result := candidate.CreateReplacement(ScalarNode, tag, candidate.Value)
				results.PushBack(result)
			} else {
				return Context{}, fmt.Errorf("cannot convert node value [%v] at path %v of tag %v to number", candidate.Value, candidate.GetNicePath(), candidate.Tag)
			}

		}
	}

	return context.ChildContext(results), nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 8b5af0694b)

Solutions

1. Clean/normalize the string before converting, e.g. remove non-numeric characters: `sub("[^0-9.]"; "") | to_number`
2. For semver or composite values, extract the numeric part explicitly (e.g. `.version | sub("\\..*"; "") | to_number`)
3. Handle commas/units: `gsub(","; "") | to_number` or strip units with sub("px"; "")
4. Guard with a select/filter so only parseable values reach to_number

Example fix

// before: "1,000" fails to parse
count | to_number
// after: strip commas first
count | sub(","; "") | to_number

// strip non-numeric characters before conversion
count | sub("[^0-9.eE+-]"; ""; "g") | to_number

// guard parseable values before converting
def isNumeric: test("^-?[0-9]+(\\.[0-9]+)?([eE][+-]?[0-9]+)?$");
.<field> | select(isNumeric) | to_number

When it happens

Trigger: `yq '.version | to_number'` where version is "1.2.3" (two dots), or to_number on values like "abc", "12px", "" (empty string scalars), or strings with thousands separators "1,000".

Common situations: Numeric-looking identifiers that are not valid numbers (semver strings, phone numbers, hex without 0x handling), locale-formatted numbers with commas, or whitespace/units embedded in the value.

Related errors

• cannot convert node at path %v of tag %v to number
• orderedMap: invalid yaml node
• expected to find one 'value' entry but found %v in position
• cannot multiply %v with %v
• cannot repeat string by a negative number (%v)

AI-assisted analysis of mikefarah/yq@8b5af0694b (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d3cfc201a25186b1. Report an issue: GitHub.