8.2 KiB
Nu Shell
A shell for the GitHub era. Like having a playground for a shell.
Status
This project has little of what will eventually be necessary for Nu to serve as your day-to-day shell. It already works well enough for contributors to dogfood it as their daily driver, but there are too many basic deficiencies for it to be useful for most people.
At the moment, executing a command that isn't identified as a built-in new command will fall back to running it as a shell command (using cmd on Windows or bash on Linux and MacOS), correctly passing through stdin, stdout and stderr, so things like your daily git workflows and even vim will work just fine.
Commands
| command | description |
|---|---|
| cd directory | Change to the given directory |
| ls | View current directory contents |
| ps | View current processes |
| open filename | Load a file into a cell, convert to table if possible (avoid by appending '--raw') |
Commands on tables
| command | description |
|---|---|
| pick ...columns | Down-select table to only these columns |
| reject ...columns | Remove the given columns from the table |
| get column-or-column-path | Open given cells as text |
| sort-by ...columns | Sort by the given columns |
| where condition | Filter table to match the condition |
| skip amount | Skip a number of rows |
| first amount | Show only the first number of rows |
| to-array | Collapse rows into a single list |
| to-json | Convert table into .json text |
| to-toml | Convert table into .toml text |
Commands on text
| command | description |
|---|---|
| from-json | Parse text as .json and create table |
| from-toml | Parse text as .toml and create table |
| split-column sep ...fields | Split row contents across multiple columns via the separator |
| split-row sep | Split row contents over multiple rows via the separator |
| trim | Trim leading and following whitespace from text data |
| {external-command} $it | Run external command with given arguments, replacing $it with each row text |
Goals
Prime Directive: Cross platform workflows, with first-class consistent support for Windows, OSX and Linux.
Priority #1: direct compatibility with existing platform-specific executables that make up people's workflows
Priority #2: Create workflow tools that more closely match the day-to-day experience of using a shell in 2019 (and beyond)
Priority #3: It's an object shell like PowerShell.
These goals are all critical, project-defining priorities. Priority #1 is "direct compatibility" because any new shell absolutely needs a way to use existing executables in a direct and natural way.
License
The project is made available under the MIT license. See "LICENSE" for more information.
A Taste of Nu
Nu has built-in commands for ls and ps, loading these results into a table you can work with.
~\Code\nushell> ps | where cpu > 0
------------------------------------------------
name cmd cpu pid status
------------------------------------------------
msedge.exe - 0.77 26472 Runnable
------------------------------------------------
nu.exe - 7.83 15473 Runnable
------------------------------------------------
SearchIndexer.exe - 82.17 23476 Runnable
------------------------------------------------
BlueJeans.exe - 4.54 10000 Runnable
------------------------------------------------
Commands are linked together with pipes, allowing you to select the data you want to use.
~\Code\nushell> ps | where name == chrome.exe | first 5
----------------------------------------
name cmd cpu pid status
----------------------------------------
chrome.exe - 0.00 22092 Runnable
----------------------------------------
chrome.exe - 0.00 17324 Runnable
----------------------------------------
chrome.exe - 0.00 16376 Runnable
----------------------------------------
chrome.exe - 0.00 21876 Runnable
----------------------------------------
chrome.exe - 0.00 13432 Runnable
----------------------------------------
The name of the columns in the table can be used to sort the table.
~\Code\nushell> ls | sort-by "file type" size
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
file name file type readonly size created accessed modified
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.cargo Directory Empty a week ago a week ago a week ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.git Directory Empty 2 weeks ago 9 hours ago 9 hours ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
images Directory Empty 2 weeks ago 2 weeks ago 2 weeks ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
src Directory Empty 2 weeks ago 10 hours ago 10 hours ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
target Directory Empty 10 hours ago 10 hours ago 10 hours ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tests Directory Empty 14 hours ago 10 hours ago 10 hours ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tmp Directory Empty 2 days ago 2 days ago 2 days ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rustfmt.toml File 16 B a week ago a week ago a week ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.gitignore File 32 B 2 weeks ago 2 weeks ago 2 weeks ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.editorconfig File 156 B 2 weeks ago 2 weeks ago 2 weeks ago
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can also use the names of the columns to down-select to only the data you want.
~\Code\nushell> ls | pick "file name" "file type" size | sort-by "file type"
------------------------------------
file name file type size
------------------------------------
.cargo Directory Empty
------------------------------------
.git Directory Empty
------------------------------------
images Directory Empty
------------------------------------
src Directory Empty
------------------------------------
target Directory Empty
------------------------------------
tests Directory Empty
------------------------------------
rustfmt.toml File 16 B
------------------------------------
.gitignore File 32 B
------------------------------------
.editorconfig File 156 B
------------------------------------
Some file types can be loaded as tables.
~\Code\nushell> open Cargo.toml
----------------------------------------------------
dependencies dev-dependencies package
----------------------------------------------------
[object Object] [object Object] [object Object]
----------------------------------------------------
~\Code\nushell> open Cargo.toml | get package
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
authors description edition license name version
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[list List] A shell for the GitHub era 2018 MIT nu 0.1.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once you've found the data, you can call out to external applications and use it.
~\Code\nushell> open Cargo.toml | get package.version | echo $it
0.1.1
Nu currently has fish-style completion of previous commands, as well ctrl-r reverse search.
