Nushell 0.87.0

Nushell, or Nu for short, is a new shell that takes a modern, structured approach to your command line. It works seamlessly with the data from your filesystem, operating system, and a growing number of file formats to make it easy to build powerful command line pipelines.

Today, we're releasing version 0.87.0 of Nu. This release focussed heavily on improving internals, fills a few gaps in our command set and completion handling, and starts work on an integrated LSP language server.

Where to get it

Nu 0.87.0 is available as pre-built binaries or from crates.io. If you have Rust installed you can install it using cargo install nu.

As part of this release, we also publish a set of optional plugins you can install and use with Nu. To install, use cargo install nu_plugin_<plugin name>.

Table of content

• Themes of this release / New features
  • Hall of fame
    • Bug fixes
    • Enhancing the documentation
    • Changes to the internals of Nushell
  • LSP is coming to Nushell
  • Living in the terminal: completions and hints
  • Handling exotic paths
  • Improving the match command
  • Pipeline redirections
  • Some work on the standard library
  • New allowed operands to the modulo operator
  • Disallowing invalid table definitions and manipulations
  • The documentation becomes better
  • Some progress in the "dataframe" department
  • Our set of commands is evolving
    • New commands
    • Changes to existing commands
    • Deprecated commands
    • Removed commands
• Breaking changes
• Full changelog

Themes of this release / New features [toc]

Hall of fame [toc]

Bug fixes [toc]

Thanks to all the contributors below for helping us solve issues and bugs 🙏

Enhancing the documentation [toc]

Thanks to all the contributors below for helping us making the documentation of Nushell commands better 🙏

Changes to the internals of Nushell [toc]

Thanks to all the contributors below for helping us making the source base of Nushell better and helping with the general development process of the project 🙏

LSP is coming to Nushell [toc]

IDE support has been and still is one of the big goals for Nushell 1.0: a modern language needs to have proper language support to unlock pleasant and fast development with it 😄

In #10990, @fdncred made the shell integration with VS Code better.

Thanks to @schrieveslaach and #10723, LSP is now coming to Nushell!

As Cargo comes with Rust, we want Nushell to embed its language support one way or another. The goal is to make nu fully featured and capable of handling LSP, formatting, and testing without any extra installation by default.

#10723 integrates a Language Server Protocol (LSP) implementation directly inside Nushell. Running

nu --lsp

will start the language server.

When properly configured in an IDE, the server can be run and then a client can attach to it and query things like diagnostics, completions, and more in the future.

A very incomplete example, just to give you an idea, could be the following to setup nu --lsp as a language server in Neovim:

configs.nulsp = {
    default_config = {
        cmd = { "nu", "--lsp" },
        filetypes = { "nu" },
        root_dir = function(fname)
            ...
        end
    },
}

Living in the terminal: completions and hints [toc]

Thanks to @lavafroth in #10898 Nushell will now fall back to the builtin default completer when external completers are defined but return no results for the current command.

Let's say you have Carapace setup as an external completer but it is not able to autocomplete git comm<TAB>, then Nushell will try to do it.

Because most commands make sense only in the directory they were run in, @p00f wrote #10780 which will make hints aware of the current directory.

Handling exotic paths [toc]

As can be seen in #10571 , #10364 , #10211 , #9558, #9310 and probably more related issues and duplicates, handling exotic filenames and filesystem paths, e.g. containing globbing characters or looking like command options, is a non-trivial problem to solve.

As part of this new release, @lavafroth and @bobhy have worked in the direction of making this experience better in Nushell:

• files that look like command options, i.e. starting with - or -- will be correctly escaped in completions with #10721
• with #10694 commands such as cp, rm, or mv will first look at files from the input paths as the literal string and then, only if the literal file does not exist, they will expand the globbing and work on the resulting found files

e.g. let's say I created a bunch of files, one of them containing an obvious globbing pattern

touch *.txt foo.txt bar.txt baz.txt

• running rm *.txt once will only remove *.txt and leave the three {foo,bar,baz}.txt files
• running rm *.txt a second time will remove all the other files

Improving the match command [toc]

Can we all agree for one moment that match is a great command?

def work-on-list []: any -> string {
    match $in {
        [$x, ..] if $x == 1 => { 'good list' },
        [..] => { 'not a very good list' },
        _ => { 'not a list at all' }
    }
}

> [1, 2, 3] | work-on-list
good list
> [2, 1, 3] | work-on-list
not a very good list
> "ehe i'm not a list" | work-on-list
not a list at all

However, it had a pretty big flaw: it was not able to work on null values 😮

> match null { null => "success", _ => "failure" }
failure

In #10829, thanks to @hudclark, the match command is now able to work properly on null values.

> match null { null => "success", _ => "failure" }
success

Pipeline redirections [toc]

Once again @WindSoilder has been working on pipeline redirections. Because they need to be given a target path to properly function, i.e.

echo aaa o> | ignore

does not make sense in itself, #10835 makes commands such as the one just above throw a nice error:

Error: nu::parser::parse_mismatch

  × Parse mismatch during operation.
   ╭─[entry #1:1:1]
 1 │ echo aaa o> | ignore
   ·          ─┬
   ·           ╰── expected redirection target
   ╰────

The following will still function as expected:

echo aaa o> foo.txt | ignore

Some work on the standard library [toc]

@amtoine made the use of std 'path add' better in #10710. Now this command that allows adding paths to the $env.PATH environment variable will (1) expand all the input paths to get only absolute paths and (2) split $env.PATH on : to make sure the command runs properly the first time it runs in the configuration.

A new candidate to the standard library, null-stream, has been added by @Hullabaloo-and-Howdy-Do in nushell/nu_scripts#649

New allowed operands to the modulo operator [toc]

When doing maths, modulo is a ubiquitous operator, e.g.

> (11 + 5) mod 7
2

> (123 * 456) mod 13
6

However, this operation was only possible on int and float values. As durations are so similar to integers and real numbers, i.e. they are just numbers with a simple unit, @gaetschwartz implemented the mod operator of Nushell for durations in #10745.

Thanks to their work, Nushell will now allow the following command:

> (2min + 31sec) mod 20sec
11sec

Disallowing invalid table definitions and manipulations [toc]

As can be seen in #11020 and #10875, Nushell will let you define or manipulate tables that have columns called the same. Starting the effort to fix these unexpected and error-prone behaviors, @sholderbach disallowed the definition of table literals with duplicated columns in #10875.

Trying to define the following ill-defined table

[[a a]; [1 2]]

will result in an error from now onwards.

Error: nu::shell::column_defined_twice

  × Record field or table column used twice
   ╭─[entry #2:1:1]
 1 │ [[a a]; [1 2]]
   ·   ┬ ┬
   ·   │ ╰── field redefined here
   ·   ╰── field first defined here
   ╰────

The documentation becomes better [toc]

This section sheds some light on some of the contributions from Enhancing the documentation.

• @drbrain in #10952 made plugins show their extra usage and search terms in --help

PluginSignature test 1 for plugin. Returns Value::Nothing

Extra usage for nu-example-1

Search terms: example

Usage:
  > nu-example-1 {flags} <a> <b> (opt) ...(rest)

Flags:
  -h, --help - Display the help message for this command
  -f, --flag - a flag for the signature
  -n, --named <String> - named string

Parameters:
  a <int>: required integer value
  b <string>: required string value
  opt <int>: Optional number (optional)
  ...rest <string>: rest value string

Examples:
  running example with an int value and string value
  > nu-example-1 3 bb

Some progress in the "dataframe" department [toc]

Thanks again to @ayax79 who has been working on the dataframes.

• dataframes will now support small int types with #10828
• with #10943, dataframes will now be able to read Polars structs, such as JSONL or PARQUET files that contain rows with structured data

Our set of commands is evolving [toc]

As usual, new release rhymes with changes to commands!

New commands [toc]

• whoami using uutils by @tertsdiepraam in #10488
• umkdir using uutils by @KAAtheWiseGit in #10785
  • In an upcoming release we intend to replace our existing mkdir command with this uutils implementation
• exec for Windows by @IanManske in #11001

Changes to existing commands [toc]

• the ansi link command has been put back to the default set of commands of Nushell by @hustcer in #10801. It should be available without any extra steps with this release.
• @Tiggax added --ignore-error to reject #10737
• in #10795 @gaetschwartz added a --detailed option to describe
• --update has been added back to cp by @ludwig-austermann in #10824
• empty lists are now allowed as input to group-by and will return an empty record thanks to @0scvr in #10730
• @CAD97 has improved the return types of registry value in #10806
• @gaetschwartz has made the debug info command lazy in #10728
• group-by now returns a table instead of a record if you pass it the new flag --to-table thanks to @drbrain and #10848.
• with the changes from @fdncred in #10870 and #10912, sort-by is now allowed to work with records and compact with empty strings
• input list will now return null when no choice has been selected, see the contribution of @KAAtheWiseGit in #10913
• thanks to @KAAtheWiseGit error make has been refactored in #10923 and will now take a $.label.span and a $.help

error make {
    msg: "Message"
    label: {
        text: "Label text"
        span: (metadata $var).span
    }
}

• with #11013 and thanks to @sholderbach transpose has been refactored and should now be much faster
• in #11024 @WindSoilder allowed reject to take lists as selector values
• the --pretty option has been removed from to xml in favor of --indent by @Hofer-Julian in #10668

Deprecated commands [toc]

• extern-wrapped in favor of def --wrapped by @amtoine in #10716
• def-env in favor of def --env by @amtoine in #10715
• unfold in favor of generate by @fdncred and @amtoine in #10770 and #10771
• size in favor of str stats by @amtoine and @hustcer in #10772 and #10798
• glob --not in favor of glob --exclude by @amtoine in #10827

Removed commands [toc]

• the $nothing variable by @amtoine in #10567
• random integer by @amtoine in #10568 in favor of random int
• profile by @kubouch in #10807

Breaking changes [toc]

• #10884 Improve case insensitivity consistency
• #10923 Refactor error make
• #10913 Change input list to return null
• #10875 Disallow duplicated columns in table literals
• #10806 Improve registry value return types
• #10807 Finish removing profile command and related data
• #10568 remove random integer in favor of random int
• #10668 Remove to xml --pretty
• #10567 remove the $nothing variable

Full changelog [toc]

Nushell

• WindSoilder created
  • fix custom command's default value
  • make reject support list input directly
  • Refactor: introduce a gen_save_call function to reduce duplicate code
  • redirection: fix internal commands error with o+e> redirection
  • redirect should have a target
  • Refactor: remove duplicate code to simplify lite_parsing logic.
  • Refactor: simplify lex_item impl
• sholderbach created
  • Bump rustix patch versions
  • Revert "add color-backtrace crate (#10942)"
  • Refactor transpose and improve perf
  • Add Record::truncate for trimming based on len
  • Use record API in more parts of nu-protocol
  • Add Record::drain to take out elements by range
  • Refactor and fix Config<->Value mechanism
  • Use Record's public API in a bunch of places
  • Refactor table cmd and nu-table with Record API
  • Refactor find in terms of clean Record API
  • Use Record APIs in nu-protocol/nu-engine
  • Disallow duplicated columns in table literals
  • Convert "pure" macros to pure fn in config.rs
  • Add Record::remove/retain/retain_mut
  • Add common map-like API to nu_protocol::Record
  • Convert more examples and tests to record! macro
  • Revert "Bump regex from 1.9.6 to 1.10.2"
  • Spell out our platform support policy
  • Bump version to 0.86.1
• app/dependabot created
  • Bump crate-ci/typos from 1.16.22 to 1.16.23
  • Bump indexmap from 2.0.2 to 2.1.0
  • Bump crate-ci/typos from 1.16.21 to 1.16.22
  • Bump hustcer/setup-nu from 3.7 to 3.8
  • Bump hustcer/setup-nu from 3.6 to 3.7
  • Bump rust-ini from 0.19.0 to 0.20.0
  • Bump scraper from 0.17.1 to 0.18.1
  • Bump crate-ci/typos from 1.16.20 to 1.16.21
  • Bump which from 4.4.2 to 5.0.0
  • Bump uuid from 1.4.1 to 1.5.0
  • Bump regex from 1.9.6 to 1.10.2
  • Bump crate-ci/typos from 1.16.19 to 1.16.20
  • Bump csv from 1.2.2 to 1.3.0
  • Bump lru from 0.11.1 to 0.12.0
  • Bump rustix from 0.36.15 to 0.36.16
• FMotalleb created
  • Fix (http) get HTTP_PROXY from $env
• gaetschwartz created
  • Fix tests for cargo.exe check command
  • Fix describe -d for lazy records
  • Make debug info lazy
  • Add detailed flag for describe
  • Implement modulo for duration
• IanManske created
  • Implement Display for CellPath
  • Refactor flatten command
  • Refactor drop columns to fix issues
  • Refactor env conversion to eliminate Value::follow_cell_path_not_from_user_input
  • Add exec command for Windows
  • Use Record::get instead of Value functions
  • Use Vec for Closure captures
  • Reduce element shifting in Record::retain_mut
  • Make FromValue take owned Values
  • Reuse Closure type in Value::Closure
• ayax79 created
  • Adding support for Polars structs
  • Dataframe support for small int types
• drbrain created
  • Match toolkit clippy settings to CI clippy settings
  • Convert ShellError::DatetimeParseError to named fields
  • Convert ShellError::UnsupportedInput to named fields
  • Update description and error types for split-by
  • Restore test_config tests
  • Show plugin extra usage and search terms
  • group-by now returns a table instead of a record
• CAD97 created
  • Improve case insensitivity consistency
  • Limit run-external --redirect-combine sh test to not(Windows)
  • Improve registry value return types
  • Remove registry clean_string hack
• KAAtheWiseGit created
  • Add special error case for alias
  • Fix issues with error make refactor
  • Refactor error make
  • Change input list to return null
  • Change category of scope commands to core
  • Add umkdir command
• hustcer created
  • Fix alpine docker file
  • Update Nushell version to v0.86 for release script
  • Deprecate size to str stats
  • Move ansi link from extra to default feature, close #10792
  • Fix winget release submission error
• fdncred created
  • allow vscode-specific ansi escape sequence to set path
  • allow items to properly evaluate block settings
  • update items example to send data through the pipeline
  • add color-backtrace crate for more intuitive backtraces
  • remove unnecessary files
  • updates trash dependency to 3.1.2
  • remove unwraps in registry_query command
  • allow compact to also compact empty strings
  • allow sort-by to work with records
  • updated NU_LIB_DIRS delimiter for command line
  • fix main not building due to errors later found in describe
  • rename unfold to generate
  • update release-pkg.nu with updated manual instructions
• dzorya created
  • better help message for MissingPositional error
• stfacc created
  • Add "shape_keyword" to default config
  • Do not use white text in the default light theme
• schrieveslaach created
  • Integrated Language Server
• lavafroth created
  • Return external file completions if not empty
  • fix: preserve path when completing intermediate directory
  • Extract common logic for setting error in parse_short_flags
  • Escape path that could be a flag
• michel-slm created
  • [nu-cmd-base] add missing LICENSE text
• amtoine created
  • use to_lowercase in str downcase
  • deprecate glob --not in favor of glob --exclude
  • expand paths and split PATH in std path add
  • sync $env.config.filesize.metric
  • add toolkit run to run a Nushell revision
  • deprecate size to str size
  • add unfold back with a deprecation warning
  • remove random integer in favor of random int
  • remove the $nothing variable
  • deprecate def-env and export def-env
  • deprecate extern-wrapped and export extern-wrapped
  • remove the last mention to let-env
• tertsdiepraam created
  • implement whoami using uutils
• ludwig-austermann created
  • readd update flag to cp command
• hudclark created
  • Support pattern matching null literals
  • fix: Ensure consistent vals and cols when parsing with --flexible
• kubouch created
  • Finish removing profile command and related data
• Hofer-Julian created
  • Add long options for viewers
  • Use long options for string
  • Add long options for path
  • Add long options for platform and random
  • Remove to xml --pretty
  • Add long options for generators and math
  • Add long options for misc and network
• p00f created
  • Make hints aware of the current directory
• 0scvr created
  • Allow empty list inputs in group-by and return empty record
• Tiggax created
  • Add --ignore-error to reject
• sophiajt created
  • fix the flag type on release-pkg.nu
• bobhy created
  • Allow filesystem commands to access files with glob metachars in name

Extension

• EmilyGraceSeville7cf created
  • More conditional and loop snippets
• Yakiyo created
  • automatically publish extension to open vsx registry on release
• fdncred created
  • Prepare for release

Documentation

• WindSoilder created
  • Rename back from Changelog to Blog
• Traister101 created
  • Clarify Dumping files into directory
• MarikaChlebowska created
  • Fix broken link
• amtoine created
  • add a few fixes for the release note of 0.86.0
  • update the Direnv section in the cookbook
  • put Starship integration forward in prompt chapter
• cosineblast created
  • Add Pipelines section about stdout output
• wanesty created
  • Cookbook ssh agent - alternatives fixing zombie agents
• noverby created
  • Add Argument Type Interpretation to Scripts
• stfacc created
  • Add instructions to change default shell for GNOME Console
• xBLACKICEx created
  • zh-CN translation update dataframes
• Roba1993 created
  • Book scripts with sub-commands
• CBenoit created
  • Add a note on theming Reedline’s menus
• sholderbach created
  • Update list of "types" i.e. syntax shapes for defs
• rukai created
  • add translation for bash "command 2>&1 | less"
• Stromberg90 created
  • Fixed typo.
• hustcer created
  • Update shiki, vuepress plugins and Nushell grammar
  • Refresh command docs for Nu v0.86
• hatunike created
  • Update types_of_data.md with "into float"
• 0scvr created
  • Update outdated std log import in std_log.nu

Nu_Scripts

• sholderbach created
  • Change nu-deps script to not care about waves
  • Update nu_release.nu for 0.87 release
• Abdillah created
  • completions/git: fix support for path relative to current directory
• fj0r created
  • cwdhist: remove sqlite3 dependency
  • shift_alt_e to switch cwdhist history mode
  • change cwdhist_menu layout to list
  • cwdhist: alternative to zoxide
  • replace def-env with def --env
  • upgrade to 0.86
• amtoine created
  • fix the TOC of the release note template
  • fix the indentation of the comments in the release note template...
  • add a command to get last release date in the release note template
  • complete the release note template
  • add a few enhancements to the create-pr script for releases
  • make list-merged-prs a module and add template example
  • update the nu-themes readme
  • make hooks a module
  • make the themes a module
  • fix removed commands
• fnuttens created
  • Add git aliases
  • Add git push origin --delete aliases
  • Fix git hard reset to origin branch alias (groh)
• fdncred created
  • fix conflicts between git-completions.nu and git-aliases.nu
• Hullabaloo-and-Howdy-Do created
  • null-stream.nu as stdlib-candidate
• AntoineSebert created
  • fix: replace -c ['name' 'connection'] by --column { name: connection }
• drbrain created
  • Improved CDPATH

Reedline

• Hofer-Julian created
  • Also run clippy on examples
• p00f created
  • CwdAwareHinter: remove cwd filter when there are no results
  • add cwd aware hinter
• ClementNerma created
  • Add more derive impl for HistoryItemId
  • Make Result and ReedlineError public
• LevitatingBusinessMan created
  • re-enable bracketed paste on not(windows) (fixes #9944) (fixes #648)
• fdncred created
  • don't allow certain examples to compile without their features
• stfacc created
  • Split hinter tokens at Unicode word boundaries
• sunfishcode created
  • Avoid consuming CPU when waiting for input.