Getting number of tokens from NFT contract

[pbirbarah]

I have a simple NFT contract and trying to extract the number of tokens using _tokenIds.current(); but after deployment I call the function and it gives me this : BN { negative: 0, words: [ 0, <1 empty item> ], length: 1, red: null } while I am expecting a uint 256.

this is the contract
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.0;
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC721/ERC721.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/utils/Counters.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/access/Ownable.sol";

//should I add payable here????
contract Main_NFT_contract is ERC721, Ownable {
using Counters for Counters.Counter;
using Strings for uint256;
Counters.Counter private _tokenIds;
mapping(uint256 => string) private _tokenURIs;

constructor() ERC721("NFE collection", "N*F*E") {}

function _setTokenURI(uint256 tokenId, string memory _tokenURI)
    internal
    virtual
{
    _tokenURIs[tokenId] = _tokenURI;
}

function tokenURI(uint256 tokenId)
    public
    view
    virtual
    override
    returns (string memory)
{
    require(
        _exists(tokenId),
        "ERC721Metadata: URI query for nonexistent token"
    );
    string memory _tokenURI = _tokenURIs[tokenId];
    return _tokenURI;
}

function mint(address recipient, string memory uri)
    public
    onlyOwner
    returns (uint256)
{
    _tokenIds.increment();
    uint256 newItemId = _tokenIds.current();
    _mint(recipient, newItemId);
    _setTokenURI(newItemId, uri);
    return newItemId;
}

function burn (uint256 tokenId)
    public
    onlyOwner
    {
        _burn(tokenId);
    }

function NumberOfTokens()
    public
    view
    returns (uint256)
    {
        uint256 num_token = _tokenIds.current();
        return num_token;
    }

}

[pbirbarah]

turns out the answer is in the "words" attribute and solution is here

https://www.preciouschicken.com/blog/posts/decomposing-a-bignumber-in-truffle-console/