Ability to parse string to integer

[austince]

Please describe your feature request.

Sometimes there are integers encoded as strings (because, sigh) and it would be nice to be able to parse them dynamically for things like sorting.

Describe the solution you'd like
If we have data1.yml like:
(please keep to around 10 lines )

- version: "10"
- version: "9"
- version: "11"

And we run a command:

yq 'sort_by(.version | parseint)'

it could output

- version: "9"
- version: "10"
- version: "11"

Describe alternatives you've considered

I tried adding a 0 to try to force integer evaluation to no avail.

Additional context
Generally being able to change the data type of a field while processing would be useful. Is this already available in some way I haven't found?

[austince]

Ah, found something along these lines is possible with tag manipulation and map_values.

map_values(. | .version type = "!!int")

A proper parseint func still might be clearer and handle errors better? Unsure.

[mikefarah]

parse_int and other scalars make sense I think, I'd take a PR for this.

In the meantime, you can actually use the yaml decode operator which will automatically detect the type:

yq '"3" | @yamld' -n
3
yq '"3" | @yamld | tag' -n
!!int

[venkatesh2090]

Hi, is this a duplicate of #71 as well?

[mikefarah]

Yep 👍🏼 This is fixed in the 4.40 pre-release here: https://github.com/mikefarah/yq/releases/tag/v4.40.1 - will be looking to make an official 4.41 release soon

[mikefarah]

Fixed in 4.40.3