# Strange behaviour in Ansible 2.19: String converted to an int **URL:** \ **Category:** Get Help\ **Tags:** 219, ansible-core\ **Created:** [March 17, 2026, 7:15am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/strange-behaviour-in-ansible-2-19-string-converted-to-an-int/45545 "2026-03-17T07:15:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![anon81884396](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b782af/32.png) [@anon81884396](https://forum.ansible.com/u/anon81884396)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2026, 10:22pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/strange-behaviour-in-ansible-2-19-string-converted-to-an-int/45545/5 "2026-03-17T22:22:23Z")
The behavior of extra vars behaving differently between 2.18 and 2.19 with AWX in the mix seems similar to an issue I had in 2025. The gist is that I had an AWX job template that would take a datetime input string passed as an extravar; when my execution environment used Ansible 2.18 it took the datetime as a literal string and worked for my purposes. When I switched this same job to use a 2.19 EE, the string would not be preserved literally, but interpreted into a different, incompatible with my use case date time string. The thread was here [AWX extra\_var for datetimes exhibiting different behavior between Ansible 2.18 and 2.19](https://forum.ansible.com/t/awx-extra-var-for-datetimes-exhibiting-different-behavior-between-ansible-2-18-and-2-19/44466) Sorry if this isn’t terribly useful, but there was a reply that did elaborate a bit on why the behavior might be happening. At any rate, I’m glad I got to learn about sexagesimals. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.ansible.com/t/strange-behaviour-in-ansible-2-19-string-converted-to-an-int/45545)._