Setup

To get the most out of nu, it is important to setup your path and env for easy access. There are other ways to view these values and variables, however setting up your nu configuration will make it much easier as these have cross-platform support.


Configure your path and other environment variables

In order to configure your path in nushell you'll need to modify your PATH environment variable in your config.nu file. Open your config.nu file and put an entry in it like let-env PATH = "path1;path2;path3" ensuring that you use the proper path separation character, which is different by platform.

Alternately, if you want to change your path temporarily, you can do the same command at the prompt.

If you want to append a folder to your PATH environment variable you can do that too using the append or prepend command like this:

> let-env PATH = ($env.PATH | append "some/other/path")

For more detailed instructions, see the environment variables documentation hereopen in new window

How to list your environment variables

> $env

Output

─────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────
 ALLUSERSPROFILE                 │ C:\ProgramData
 CARGO_PKG_AUTHORS               │ The Nu Project Contributors
 CARGO_PKG_DESCRIPTION           │ A new type of shell
 CARGO_PKG_HOMEPAGE              │ https://www.nushell.sh
 CARGO_PKG_LICENSE               │ MIT
 CARGO_PKG_LICENSE_FILE          │
 CARGO_PKG_NAME                  │ nu
 CARGO_PKG_REPOSITORY            │ https://github.com/nushell/nushell
 CARGO_PKG_VERSION               │ 0.59.0
 CARGO_PKG_VERSION_MAJOR         │ 0

or for a more detailed view, use our new env command.

> env

Output

────┬─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────
 #  │            name             │            type             │            value            │             raw
────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────
  0 │ ALLUSERSPROFILE             │ string                      │ C:\ProgramData              │ C:\ProgramData
  1 │ APPDATA                     │ string                      │ C:\Users\someuser10\AppData │ C:\Users\someuser10\AppData
    │                             │                             │ \Roaming                    │ \Roaming
  2 │ CARGO                       │ string                      │ \\?\C:\Users\someuser10\.ru │ \\?\C:\Users\someuser10\.ru
    │                             │                             │ stup\toolchains\stable-x86_ │ stup\toolchains\stable-x86_
    │                             │                             │ 64-pc-windows-msvc\bin\carg │ 64-pc-windows-msvc\bin\carg
    │                             │                             │ o.exe                       │ o.exe
  3 │ CARGO_HOME                  │ string                      │ C:\Users\someuser10\.cargo  │ C:\Users\someuser10\.cargo
  4 │ CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR          │ string                      │ C:\Users\someuser10\source\ │ C:\Users\someuser10\source\
    │                             │                             │ repos\forks\nushell         │ repos\forks\nushell
  5 │ CARGO_PKG_AUTHORS           │ string                      │ The Nu Project Contributors │ The Nu Project Contributors
  6 │ CARGO_PKG_DESCRIPTION       │ string                      │ A new type of shell         │ A new type of shell
  7 │ CARGO_PKG_HOMEPAGE          │ string                      │ https://www.nushell.sh      │ https://www.nushell.sh
  8 │ CARGO_PKG_LICENSE           │ string                      │ MIT                         │ MIT
  9 │ CARGO_PKG_LICENSE_FILE      │ string                      │                             │
 10 │ CARGO_PKG_NAME              │ string                      │ nu                          │ nu
 11 │ CARGO_PKG_REPOSITORY        │ string                      │ https://github.com/nushell/ │ https://github.com/nushell/

How to get a single environment variable's value

> $env.APPDATA

or

> env | where name == APPDATA
───┬─────────┬────────┬─────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────
 # │  name   │  type  │                value                │                 raw
───┼─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────
 0 │ APPDATA │ string │ C:\Users\someuser10\AppData\Roaming │ C:\Users\someuser10\AppData\Roaming
───┴─────────┴────────┴─────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────