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.

Note

The optional dataframe functionality is available by cargo install nu --features=dataframe.

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 [toc]

Hall of fame [toc]

Bug fixes [toc]

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

authordescriptionurl
@hustcerFix winget release submission error#10757
@sophiajtfix the flag type on release-pkg.nu#10762
@fdncredupdate release-pkg.nu with updated manual instructions#10759
@amtoineremove the last mention to let-env#10718
@hustcerUpdate Nushell version to v0.86 for release script#10797
@stfaccDo not use white text in the default light theme#10796
@sholderbachRevert "Bump regex from 1.9.6 to 1.10.2"#10818
@fdncredfix main not building due to errors later found in describe#10821
@hudclarkfix: Ensure consistent vals and cols when parsing with --flexible#10814
@gaetschwartzFix describe -d for lazy records#10836
@fdncredupdated NU_LIB_DIRS delimiter for command line#10837
@WindSoilderredirection: fix internal commands error with o+e> redirection#10816
@amtoinesync $env.config.filesize.metric#10277
@michel-slm[nu-cmd-base] add missing LICENSE text#10855
@amtoineuse to_lowercase in str downcase#10850
@lavafrothfix: preserve path when completing intermediate directory#10831
@CAD97Improve case insensitivity consistency#10884
@stfaccAdd "shape_keyword" to default config#10922
@KAAtheWiseGitFix issues with error make refactor#10950
@hustcerFix alpine docker file#10992
@gaetschwartzFix tests for cargo.exe check command#11022
@FMotallebFix (http) get HTTP_PROXY from $env#11026
@fdncredallow items to properly evaluate block settings#10980
@WindSoilderfix custom command's default value#11043

Enhancing the documentation [toc]

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

authordescriptionurl
@Hofer-JulianAdd long options for misc and network#10753
@Hofer-JulianAdd long options for generators and math#10752
@Hofer-JulianAdd long options for platform and random#10776
@Hofer-JulianAdd long options for path#10775
@Hofer-JulianUse long options for string#10777
@Hofer-JulianAdd long options for viewers#10787
@KAAtheWiseGitChange category of scope commands to core#10892
@dzoryabetter help message for MissingPositional error#10949
@drbrainShow plugin extra usage and search terms#10952
@drbrainUpdate description and error types for split-by#10865
@fdncredupdate items example to send data through the pipeline#10976
@sholderbachSpell out our platform support policy#10778

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 🙏

authordescriptionurl
@WindSoilderRefactor: simplify lex_item impl#10744
@WindSoilderRefactor: remove duplicate code to simplify lite_parsing logic.#10735
@lavafrothExtract common logic for setting error in parse_short_flags#10709
@amtoineadd toolkit run to run a Nushell revision#10687
@CAD97Remove registry clean_string hack#10804
@sholderbachConvert more examples and tests to record! macro#10840
@sholderbachAdd common map-like API to nu_protocol::Record#10841
@sholderbachAdd Record::remove/retain/retain_mut#10876
@sholderbachConvert "pure" macros to pure fn in config.rs#10893
@IanManskeReuse Closure type in Value::Closure#10894
@WindSoilderRefactor: introduce a gen_save_call function to reduce duplicate code#10852
@IanManskeMake FromValue take owned Values#10900
@sholderbachUse Record APIs in nu-protocol/nu-engine#10917
@IanManskeReduce element shifting in Record::retain_mut#10915
@fdncredremove unwraps in registry_query command#10936
@drbrainRestore test_config tests#10954
@fdncredupdates trash dependency to 3.1.2#10965
@fdncredremove unnecessary files#10966
@drbrainConvert ShellError::UnsupportedInput to named fields#10971
@IanManskeUse Vec for Closure captures#10940
@sholderbachRefactor find in terms of clean Record API#10929
@sholderbachRefactor table cmd and nu-table with Record API#10930
@drbrainConvert ShellError::DatetimeParseError to named fields#10991
@sholderbachUse Record's public API in a bunch of places#10927
@sholderbachRefactor and fix Config<->Value mechanism#10896
@IanManskeUse Record::get instead of Value functions#10925
@sholderbachAdd Record::drain to take out elements by range#11002
@sholderbachUse record API in more parts of nu-protocol#10928
@IanManskeRefactor env conversion to eliminate Value::follow_cell_path_not_from_user_input#10926
@sholderbachAdd Record::truncate for trimming based on len#11004
@IanManskeRefactor drop columns to fix issues#10903
@drbrainMatch toolkit clippy settings to CI clippy settings#10984
@IanManskeRefactor flatten command#11017
@IanManskeImplement Display for CellPath#11023
@CAD97Limit run-external --redirect-combine sh test to not(Windows)#10905
@KAAtheWiseGitAdd special error case for alias#10975

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.

Warning

The rest of this section is in the early stages of its development. It will require time to mature and be fully featured, but we're happy to ship it with Nushell as of now.

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.

Note

The following example is fictitious, carapace-bin should be able to complete it 😉

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.

Note

Hints are the shadowed incomplete completions that appear when you start typing commands, e.g. if you were to run echo foo bar baz, pressing echo would then show foo bar baz in a dimmed font: this is a hint.

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

Tips

The first time *.txt is interpreted as a literal and the *.txt file is found and removed. The second time *.txt is not found as a literal filename. rm searches for *.txt as a glob pattern; finds foo.txt, bar.txt, and baz.txt; and removes them.

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.

Note

If Bash is still your login shell, the value of $env.PATH in env.nu might be a :-separated list of system paths. This change to std 'path add' should help prevent the final $env.PATH from containing this original :-separated list of paths.

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]

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
    }
}

Deprecated commands [toc]

Removed commands [toc]

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

Extension

Documentation

Nu_Scripts

Reedline