Nushell
A new type of shell.
Table of Contents
Status
This project has reached a minimum-viable-product level of quality. Many people use it as their daily driver, but it may be unstable for some commands. Nu's design is subject to change as it matures.
Learning About Nu
The Nushell book is the primary source of Nushell documentation. You can find a full list of Nu commands in the book, and we have many examples of using Nu in our cookbook.
We're also active on Discord; come and chat with us!
Installation
To quickly install Nu:
# Linux and macOS
brew install nushell
# Windows
winget install nushell
To use Nu in GitHub Action, check setup-nu for more detail.
Detailed installation instructions can be found in the installation chapter of the book. Nu is available via many package managers:
For details about which platforms the Nushell team actively supports, see our platform support policy.
Configuration
The default configurations can be found at sample_config
which are the configuration files one gets when they start up Nushell for the first time.
It sets all of the default configuration to run Nushell. From here one can
then customize this file for their specific needs.
To see where config.nu is located on your system simply type this command.
$nu.config-path
Please see our book for all of the Nushell documentation.
Philosophy
Nu draws inspiration from projects like PowerShell, functional programming languages, and modern CLI tools.
Rather than thinking of files and data as raw streams of text, Nu looks at each input as something with structure.
For example, when you list the contents of a directory what you get back is a table of rows, where each row represents an item in that directory.
These values can be piped through a series of steps, in a series of commands called a 'pipeline'.
Pipelines
In Unix, it's common to pipe between commands to split up a sophisticated command over multiple steps.
Nu takes this a step further and builds heavily on the idea of pipelines.
As in the Unix philosophy, Nu allows commands to output to stdout and read from stdin.
Additionally, commands can output structured data (you can think of this as a third kind of stream).
Commands that work in the pipeline fit into one of three categories:
- Commands that produce a stream (e.g.,
ls)
- Commands that filter a stream (e.g.,
where type == "dir")
- Commands that consume the output of the pipeline (e.g.,
table)
Commands are separated by the pipe symbol (|) to denote a pipeline flowing left to right.
ls | where type == "dir" | table
# => ╭────┬──────────┬──────┬─────────┬───────────────╮
# => │ # │ name │ type │ size │ modified │
# => ├────┼──────────┼──────┼─────────┼───────────────┤
# => │ 0 │ .cargo │ dir │ 0 B │ 9 minutes ago │
# => │ 1 │ assets │ dir │ 0 B │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 2 │ crates │ dir │ 4.0 KiB │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 3 │ docker │ dir │ 0 B │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 4 │ docs │ dir │ 0 B │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 5 │ images │ dir │ 0 B │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 6 │ pkg_mgrs │ dir │ 0 B │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 7 │ samples │ dir │ 0 B │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 8 │ src │ dir │ 4.0 KiB │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 9 │ target │ dir │ 0 B │ a day ago │
# => │ 10 │ tests │ dir │ 4.0 KiB │ 2 weeks ago │
# => │ 11 │ wix │ dir │ 0 B │ 2 weeks ago │
# => ╰────┴──────────┴──────┴─────────┴───────────────╯
Because most of the time you'll want to see the output of a pipeline, table is assumed.
We could have also written the above:
ls | where type == "dir"
Being able to use the same commands and compose them differently is an important philosophy in Nu.
For example, we could use the built-in ps command to get a list of the running processes, using the same where as above.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
