nushell/docs/philosophy.md
2019-06-06 10:58:39 -07:00

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> This document contains philosophical notes about nu.
# Bare Words
In Nu, bare words work the same way they do in most shells.
In most shells, bare words serve two purposes:
```
$ ls
# ^^ the name of a command
$ cat Cargo.toml
# ^^^^^^^^^^ a string
```
Nu adopts this shell idiom.
Consequences:
- Bare words cannot also refer to variables. Variable names are prefixed with `$`.
- Bare words, in almost all contexts, cannot be keywords.
- Numbers and operators aren't bare words.
# One Screen
The utility of a command's output drops off extremely rapidly after a screenful of content.
By default, Nu prefers to present output that can fit into a screen rather than more complete output that spans many screens.
For example, this is the rationale for `ls` returning a flat table containing the files in the current directory, rather than presenting a tree of data by default.