21b3eeed99
<!-- if this PR closes one or more issues, you can automatically link the PR with them by using one of the [*linking keywords*](https://docs.github.com/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/linking-a-pull-request-to-an-issue#linking-a-pull-request-to-an-issue-using-a-keyword), e.g. - this PR should close #xxxx - fixes #xxxx you can also mention related issues, PRs or discussions! --> Finishes implementing https://github.com/nushell/nushell/issues/10598, which asks for a spread operator in lists, in records, and when calling commands. # Description <!-- Thank you for improving Nushell. Please, check our [contributing guide](../CONTRIBUTING.md) and talk to the core team before making major changes. Description of your pull request goes here. **Provide examples and/or screenshots** if your changes affect the user experience. --> This PR will allow spreading arguments to commands (both internal and external). It will also deprecate spreading arguments automatically when passing to external commands. # User-Facing Changes <!-- List of all changes that impact the user experience here. This helps us keep track of breaking changes. --> - Users will be able to use `...` to spread arguments to custom/builtin commands that have rest parameters or allow unknown arguments, or to any external command - If a custom command doesn't have a rest parameter and it doesn't allow unknown arguments either, the spread operator will not be allowed - Passing lists to external commands without `...` will work for now but will cause a deprecation warning saying that it'll stop working in 0.91 (is 2 versions enough time?) Here's a function to help with demonstrating some behavior: ```nushell > def foo [ a, b, c?, d?, ...rest ] { [$a $b $c $d $rest] | to nuon } ``` You can pass a list of arguments to fill in the `rest` parameter using `...`: ```nushell > foo 1 2 3 4 ...[5 6] [1, 2, 3, 4, [5, 6]] ``` If you don't use `...`, the list `[5 6]` will be treated as a single argument: ```nushell > foo 1 2 3 4 [5 6] # Note the double [[]] [1, 2, 3, 4, [[5, 6]]] ``` You can omit optional parameters before the spread arguments: ```nushell > foo 1 2 3 ...[4 5] # d is omitted here [1, 2, 3, null, [4, 5]] ``` If you have multiple lists, you can spread them all: ```nushell > foo 1 2 3 ...[4 5] 6 7 ...[8] ...[] [1, 2, 3, null, [4, 5, 6, 7, 8]] ``` Here's the kind of error you get when you try to spread arguments to a command with no rest parameter:  And this is the warning you get when you pass a list to an external now (without `...`):  # Tests + Formatting <!-- Don't forget to add tests that cover your changes. Make sure you've run and fixed any issues with these commands: - `cargo fmt --all -- --check` to check standard code formatting (`cargo fmt --all` applies these changes) - `cargo clippy --workspace -- -D warnings -D clippy::unwrap_used` to check that you're using the standard code style - `cargo test --workspace` to check that all tests pass (on Windows make sure to [enable developer mode](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/get-started/developer-mode-features-and-debugging)) - `cargo run -- -c "use std testing; testing run-tests --path crates/nu-std"` to run the tests for the standard library > **Note** > from `nushell` you can also use the `toolkit` as follows > ```bash > use toolkit.nu # or use an `env_change` hook to activate it automatically > toolkit check pr > ``` --> Added tests to cover the following cases: - Spreading arguments to a command that doesn't have a rest parameter (unexpected spread argument error) - Spreading arguments to a command that doesn't have a rest parameter *but* there's also a missing positional argument (missing positional error) - Spreading arguments to a command that doesn't have a rest parameter but does allow unknown arguments, such as `exec` (allowed) - Spreading a list literal containing arguments of the wrong type (parse error) - Spreading a non-list value, both to internal and external commands - Having named arguments in the middle of rest arguments - `explain`ing a command call that spreads its arguments # After Submitting <!-- If your PR had any user-facing changes, update [the documentation](https://github.com/nushell/nushell.github.io) after the PR is merged, if necessary. This will help us keep the docs up to date. --> # Examples Suppose you have multiple tables: ```nushell let people = [[id name age]; [0 alice 100] [1 bob 200] [2 eve 300]] let evil_twins = [[id name age]; [0 ecila 100] [-1 bob 200] [-2 eve 300]] ``` Maybe you often find yourself needing to merge multiple tables and want a utility to do that. You could write a function like this: ```nushell def merge_all [ ...tables ] { $tables | reduce { |it, acc| $acc | merge $it } } ``` Then you can use it like this: ```nushell > merge_all ...([$people $evil_twins] | each { |$it| $it | select name age }) ╭───┬───────┬─────╮ │ # │ name │ age │ ├───┼───────┼─────┤ │ 0 │ ecila │ 100 │ │ 1 │ bob │ 200 │ │ 2 │ eve │ 300 │ ╰───┴───────┴─────╯ ``` Except they had duplicate columns, so now you first want to suffix every column with a number to tell you which table the column came from. You can make a command for that: ```nushell def select_and_merge [ --cols: list<string>, ...tables ] { let renamed_tables = $tables | enumerate | each { |it| $it.item | select $cols | rename ...($cols | each { |col| $col + ($it.index | into string) }) }; merge_all ...$renamed_tables } ``` And call it like this: ```nushell > select_and_merge --cols [name age] $people $evil_twins ╭───┬───────┬──────┬───────┬──────╮ │ # │ name0 │ age0 │ name1 │ age1 │ ├───┼───────┼──────┼───────┼──────┤ │ 0 │ alice │ 100 │ ecila │ 100 │ │ 1 │ bob │ 200 │ bob │ 200 │ │ 2 │ eve │ 300 │ eve │ 300 │ ╰───┴───────┴──────┴───────┴──────╯ ``` --- Suppose someone's made a command to search for APT packages: ```nushell # The main command def search-pkgs [ --install # Whether to install any packages it finds log_level: int # Pretend it's a good idea to make this a required positional parameter exclude?: list<string> # Packages to exclude repositories?: list<string> # Which repositories to look in (searches in all if not given) ...pkgs # Package names to search for ] { { install: $install, log_level: $log_level, exclude: ($exclude | to nuon), repositories: ($repositories | to nuon), pkgs: ($pkgs | to nuon) } } ``` It has a lot of parameters to configure it, so you might make your own helper commands to wrap around it for specific cases. Here's one example: ```nushell # Only look for packages locally def search-pkgs-local [ --install # Whether to install any packages it finds log_level: int exclude?: list<string> # Packages to exclude ...pkgs # Package names to search for ] { # All required and optional positional parameters are given search-pkgs --install=$install $log_level [] ["<local URI or something>"] ...$pkgs } ``` And you can run it like this: ```nushell > search-pkgs-local --install=false 5 ...["python2.7" "vim"] ╭──────────────┬──────────────────────────────╮ │ install │ false │ │ log_level │ 5 │ │ exclude │ [] │ │ repositories │ ["<local URI or something>"] │ │ pkgs │ ["python2.7", vim] │ ╰──────────────┴──────────────────────────────╯ ``` One thing I realized when writing this was that if we decide to not allow passing optional arguments using the spread operator, then you can (mis?)use the spread operator to skip optional parameters. Here, I didn't want to give `exclude` explicitly, so I used a spread operator to pass the packages to install. Without it, I would've needed to do `search-pkgs-local --install=false 5 [] "python2.7" "vim"` (explicitly pass `[]` (or `null`, in the general case) to `exclude`). There are probably more idiomatic ways to do this, but I just thought it was something interesting. If you're a virologist of the [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/350/) kind, another helper command you might make is this: ```nushell # Install any packages it finds def live-dangerously [ ...pkgs ] { # One optional argument was given (exclude), while another was not (repositories) search-pkgs 0 [] ...$pkgs --install # Flags can go after spread arguments } ``` Running it: ```nushell > live-dangerously "git" "*vi*" # *vi* because I don't feel like typing out vim and neovim ╭──────────────┬─────────────╮ │ install │ true │ │ log_level │ 0 │ │ exclude │ [] │ │ repositories │ null │ │ pkgs │ [git, *vi*] │ ╰──────────────┴─────────────╯ ``` Here's an example that uses the spread operator more than once within the same command call: ```nushell let extras = [ chrome firefox python java git ] def search-pkgs-curated [ ...pkgs ] { (search-pkgs 1 [emacs] ["example.com", "foo.com"] vim # A must for everyone! ...($pkgs | filter { |p| not ($p | str contains "*") }) # Remove packages with globs python # Good tool to have ...$extras --install=false python3) # I forget, did I already put Python in extras? } ``` Running it: ```nushell > search-pkgs-curated "git" "*vi*" ╭──────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │ install │ false │ │ log_level │ 1 │ │ exclude │ [emacs] │ │ repositories │ [example.com, foo.com] │ │ pkgs │ [vim, git, python, chrome, firefox, python, java, git, "python3"] │ ╰──────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯ ``` |
||
|---|---|---|
| .cargo | ||
| .githooks | ||
| .github | ||
| assets | ||
| benches | ||
| crates | ||
| devdocs | ||
| docker | ||
| scripts | ||
| src | ||
| tests | ||
| wix | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| Cargo.lock | ||
| Cargo.toml | ||
| CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md | ||
| CONTRIBUTING.md | ||
| Cross.toml | ||
| LICENSE | ||
| README.md | ||
| rust-toolchain.toml | ||
| toolkit.nu | ||
Nushell
A new type of shell.
Table of Contents
- Status
- Learning About Nu
- Installation
- Configuration
- Philosophy
- Goals
- Officially Supported By
- Contributing
- License
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 and Twitter; 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 startup 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.
> ps | where cpu > 0
╭───┬───────┬───────────┬───────┬───────────┬───────────╮
│ # │ pid │ name │ cpu │ mem │ virtual │
├───┼───────┼───────────┼───────┼───────────┼───────────┤
│ 0 │ 2240 │ Slack.exe │ 16.40 │ 178.3 MiB │ 232.6 MiB │
│ 1 │ 16948 │ Slack.exe │ 16.32 │ 205.0 MiB │ 197.9 MiB │
│ 2 │ 17700 │ nu.exe │ 3.77 │ 26.1 MiB │ 8.8 MiB │
╰───┴───────┴───────────┴───────┴───────────┴───────────╯
Opening files
Nu can load file and URL contents as raw text or structured data (if it recognizes the format). For example, you can load a .toml file as structured data and explore it:
> open Cargo.toml
╭──────────────────┬────────────────────╮
│ bin │ [table 1 row] │
│ dependencies │ {record 25 fields} │
│ dev-dependencies │ {record 8 fields} │
│ features │ {record 10 fields} │
│ package │ {record 13 fields} │
│ patch │ {record 1 field} │
│ profile │ {record 3 fields} │
│ target │ {record 3 fields} │
│ workspace │ {record 1 field} │
╰──────────────────┴────────────────────╯
We can pipe this into a command that gets the contents of one of the columns:
> open Cargo.toml | get package
╭───────────────┬────────────────────────────────────╮
│ authors │ [list 1 item] │
│ default-run │ nu │
│ description │ A new type of shell │
│ documentation │ https://www.nushell.sh/book/ │
│ edition │ 2018 │
│ exclude │ [list 1 item] │
│ homepage │ https://www.nushell.sh │
│ license │ MIT │
│ metadata │ {record 1 field} │
│ name │ nu │
│ repository │ https://github.com/nushell/nushell │
│ rust-version │ 1.60 │
│ version │ 0.72.0 │
╰───────────────┴────────────────────────────────────╯
And if needed we can drill down further:
> open Cargo.toml | get package.version
0.72.0
Plugins
Nu supports plugins that offer additional functionality to the shell and follow the same structured data model that built-in commands use. There are a few examples in the crates/nu_plugins_* directories.
Plugins are binaries that are available in your path and follow a nu_plugin_* naming convention.
These binaries interact with nu via a simple JSON-RPC protocol where the command identifies itself and passes along its configuration, making it available for use.
If the plugin is a filter, data streams to it one element at a time, and it can stream data back in return via stdin/stdout.
If the plugin is a sink, it is given the full vector of final data and is given free reign over stdin/stdout to use as it pleases.
The awesome-nu repo lists a variety of nu-plugins while the showcase repo shows off informative blog posts that have been written about Nushell along with videos that highlight technical topics that have been presented.
Goals
Nu adheres closely to a set of goals that make up its design philosophy. As features are added, they are checked against these goals.
-
First and foremost, Nu is cross-platform. Commands and techniques should work across platforms and Nu has first-class support for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
-
Nu ensures compatibility with existing platform-specific executables.
-
Nu's workflow and tools should have the usability expected of modern software in 2022 (and beyond).
-
Nu views data as either structured or unstructured. It is a structured shell like PowerShell.
-
Finally, Nu views data functionally. Rather than using mutation, pipelines act as a means to load, change, and save data without mutable state.
Officially Supported By
Please submit an issue or PR to be added to this list.
Contributing
See Contributing for details. Thanks to all the people who already contributed!
License
The project is made available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more information.