nushell/crates/nu-engine
Reilly Wood 21b84a6d65
Optional members in cell paths: Attempt 2 (#8379)
This is a follow up from https://github.com/nushell/nushell/pull/7540.
Please provide feedback if you have the time!

## Summary

This PR lets you use `?` to indicate that a member in a cell path is
optional and Nushell should return `null` if that member cannot be
accessed.

Unlike the previous PR, `?` is now a _postfix_ modifier for cell path
members. A cell path of `.foo?.bar` means that `foo` is optional and
`bar` is not.

`?` does _not_ suppress all errors; it is intended to help in situations
where data has "holes", i.e. the data types are correct but something is
missing. Type mismatches (like trying to do a string path access on a
date) will still fail.

### Record Examples

```bash

{ foo: 123 }.foo # returns 123

{ foo: 123 }.bar # errors
{ foo: 123 }.bar? # returns null

{ foo: 123 } | get bar # errors
{ foo: 123 } | get bar? # returns null

{ foo: 123 }.bar.baz # errors
{ foo: 123 }.bar?.baz # errors because `baz` is not present on the result from `bar?`
{ foo: 123 }.bar.baz? # errors
{ foo: 123 }.bar?.baz? # returns null
```

### List Examples
```
〉[{foo: 1} {foo: 2} {}].foo
Error: nu:🐚:column_not_found

  × Cannot find column
   ╭─[entry #30:1:1]
 1 │ [{foo: 1} {foo: 2} {}].foo
   ·                    ─┬  ─┬─
   ·                     │   ╰── cannot find column 'foo'
   ·                     ╰── value originates here
   ╰────
〉[{foo: 1} {foo: 2} {}].foo?
╭───┬───╮
│ 0 │ 1 │
│ 1 │ 2 │
│ 2 │   │
╰───┴───╯
〉[{foo: 1} {foo: 2} {}].foo?.2 | describe
nothing

〉[a b c].4? | describe
nothing

〉[{foo: 1} {foo: 2} {}] | where foo? == 1
╭───┬─────╮
│ # │ foo │
├───┼─────┤
│ 0 │   1 │
╰───┴─────╯
```

# Breaking changes

1. Column names with `?` in them now need to be quoted.
2. The `-i`/`--ignore-errors` flag has been removed from `get` and
`select`
1. After this PR, most `get` error handling can be done with `?` and/or
`try`/`catch`.
4. Cell path accesses like this no longer work without a `?`:
```bash
〉[{a:1 b:2} {a:3}].b.0
2
```
We had some clever code that was able to recognize that since we only
want row `0`, it's OK if other rows are missing column `b`. I removed
that because it's tricky to maintain, and now that query needs to be
written like:


```bash
〉[{a:1 b:2} {a:3}].b?.0
2
```

I think the regression is acceptable for now. I plan to do more work in
the future to enable streaming of cell path accesses, and when that
happens I'll be able to make `.b.0` work again.
2023-03-15 20:50:58 -07:00
..
src Optional members in cell paths: Attempt 2 (#8379) 2023-03-15 20:50:58 -07:00
Cargo.toml Bump to 0.77.1 development version (#8453) 2023-03-14 23:26:08 +01:00
LICENSE Include license text in all crates (#5094) 2022-04-08 10:47:13 +02:00