Nushell 0.84.0

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 0.84.0 of Nu. This release adds exporting constants from modules, scope commands improvements, cosmetic changes, and many smaller changes to our commands.

Where to get it

Nu 0.84.0 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>.

Themes of this release / New features

(Major Breaking Change!) str replace matches substring by default (kubouch)

Breaking change

See a full overview of the breaking changes

str replace now matches a substring instead of a regular expression by default and the -s/--string flag is deprecated (will be removed altogether in 0.85). Matching a substring by default makes it more consistent with the rest of the Nushell's commands.

💡 Note! Since str replace is a widely used command, many scripts are going to break. Fixing it is easy:

  • If you used str replace without the -s/--string flag, you used regex matching and you should add --regex flag to keep the previous functionality.
  • If you used str replace with the -s/--string flag, you will get a deprecation warning. To get rid of the warning, simply remove the flag.

Constants from modules (WindSoilder, kubouch)

You can now use constants in modules and export them. Calling use on a module will create record containing all module's constants. You can also import the constants directly, for example with use module.nu const-name, without creating the module's record. Example:

> module spam {
    export const X = 'x'
    export module eggs {
        export const Y = 'y'
        export const viking = 'eats'
    }
}

> use spam

> $spam
╭──────┬───────────────────╮
│ eggs │ {record 2 fields} │
│ X    │ x                 │
╰──────┴───────────────────╯

> $spam.eggs
╭────────┬──────╮
│ Y      │ y    │
│ viking │ eats │
╰────────┴──────╯

> use spam eggs viking

> $viking
eats

The exported values are true constants which means that you can use them in some scenarios where you cannot use normal variables, such as:

> module files {
    export const MY_CONFIG = '/home/viking/.config/nushell/my_config.nu'
}

> use files MY_CONFIG

> source $MY_CONFIG  # sources '/home/viking/.config/nushell/my_config.nu'

New options for more compact table display (@zhiburt, #9796)

To save screen space, you can now display tables with the header directly displayed on the border through the $env.config.table.header_on_separator option.

Table with header displayed on border

Additionally you can now configure the padding left and right of the table cell content either separately or all at once to adjust the layout for your readability needs.

Table with different padding options

More consistent format ... commands (@sholderbach, @WindSoilder)

Breaking change

See a full overview of the breaking changes

With this release we moved several commands that serve to produce string output from a particular data type as format subcommands.

  1. date format has been renamed to format date (#9788).
  2. into duration --convert was previously used to provide string representations of durations. This option has been removed and you should now use format duration. (#9902)
  3. format filesize that was previously moved into the --features extra set is back in the core (#9978).

scope commands enhancements (kubouch, kubouch)

scope commands received a significant amount of improvements making them more useful for advanced introspection of Nushell's definitions.

  • scope externs now lists known externals (defined with extern)
  • scope aliases is now fixed and lists names and usages of the aliases, not of the aliased commands (this used to cause some confusion)
  • scope modules now lists all the exportable of the module, including submodules with their contents
  • all scope commands now list the definition's ID which can be used for reliable tracking of definitions. For example, a command foo imported from a module spam using use spam will be named spam foo, therefore, relying solely on names of the definitions can sometimes be misleading.
  • module_name field is no longer present
  • scope variables now denotes whether a variable is a constant or not

http commands now handle headers better (@jflics6460, @ineu

You can now pass headers directly as a record to the -H flag.

http get -H {cookie: "acc=foobar"} http://example.com

When running a http command with --full to get additional metadata about the response you can now get both the request and the response header

http get --full -H {cooke: "my=cookie"} | get headers | get response

Work on the optional dataframe features (@ayax79)

@ayax79 has been working hard to update our dataframe command to work again with the stricter type check by consolidating internal logic (#9860, #9951).

Furthermore, dfr open now supports the avro exchange format and a new dfr to-avro command was added in #10019

Changes to other commands

Since last release, some commands have changed, here is a list of some interesting changed

  • @atahabaki in #9841, #9856 and #9940: Some refinement of the str expand command (it's a really cool command, i recommend you check it out 😃)
  • @fdncred in #9987: Allow select to take a variable with a list of columns
  • @fdncred in #10048: Allow int as a cellpath for select

Command organization (@storm, @sophiajt)

In our efforts towards stabilization we moved several commands either behind the --features extra build-flag or back into the core set of commands. The special str *-case commands for example have been moved out of the core set, while the bytes commands to deal with bytes in arbitrary encodings have returned to the core set. Furthermore all commands in the core set should now have helpful categories associated with them.

Deprecation and removal of commands (@amtoine, @sholderbach)

We previously used the term "deprecation" pretty loosely to describe the removal of commands while emitting a helpful error. We intend to now start to use deprecation to warn you before the final removal of a particular option or command. When we removed a command we will now properly refer to it as removal and started adding warnings where appropriate (e.g. str replace --string). As part of this update we removed some very old error helpers nudging you to upgrade to new commands.

Documentation

Thanks to @rgwood, @sholderbach, @kubouch and @fdncred the documentation has become a bit better in #9961, #9996, #10004 and #10057.

Notable bugfixes

  • A panic when parsing the context of let assignments has been fixed (@mengsuenyan in #9851)
  • Invoking --help on a script with a def main command will now report the script's name instead of a more confusing main (@sophiajt in #9948)
  • Serious bugs in parse that produced incorrect output when given a long input stream have been fixed (@panicbit in #9925, #9950)

Bugfixes

Thanks to all the contributors who tackled one or more bugs!

NameLinkDescription
@mengsuenyan#9853Fix ~ | path type returning empty string
@mengsuenyan#9851Fix the panic when type a statement similar to let f = 'f' $ in the nushell
@sophiajt#9893Revert #9693 to prevent CPU hangs
@NotLebedev#9935Nothing has the correct return type
@amtoine#9947Force version to update when installing with toolkit.nu
@amtoine#9967Fix panic with lines on an error
@rgwood#9990Fix watch not handling all file changes
@nibon7#9784Fix a crash when moving the cursor after accepting a suggestion from the help menu
@meskill#10007Fix parser to not update plugin.nu file on nu startup
@zhiburt#10011nu-table: Fix padding 0 width issues
@3lvir4#10012Remove potential panic from path join
@kubouch#10046Fix wrong path expansion in save
@zhiburt#10050nu-table: Fix issue with truncation and text border
@sophiajt#10052Fix default_env.nu after latest changes to str replace
@fdncred#10067Allow return to return any nushell value
@fdncred#10063Fix into datetime to accept more date/time formats

And also to those who did tackle purely technical challenges!!

NameLinkDescription
@IanManske#9909Enable macOS foreground process handling
@sophiajt#9933Add tests for script subcommands
@sophiajt#9936Fix a couple clippy warnings
@IanManske#9927Make Value::columns return slice instead of cloned Vec
@sophiajt#9949Move help commands to use more structure in signatures
@fdncred#9958Update strip-ansi-escapes to use new api
@rgwood#9971Put heavy dataframe dependencies behind feature flag
@sholderbach#9974Fixup dataframe build after #9971
@meskill#9976test: Clear parent environment to prevent leakage to tests
@kubouch#10036Add additional span to IncorrectValue error

Breaking changes

  • #9902 date format has been renamed to format date for consistency.
  • #9788 The option into duration --convert to format durations has been removed. Use the format duration command instead.
  • #10038 str replace now by default matches to strings by default. If you want to use regexes you need to use the -r flag. The --strings flag has been removed
  • #9632 To be unambiguous the duration type now does not report months or years. The largest unit reported is weeks as they have a consistent length compared to months or years.
  • #9926 We moved some of the more exotic str case-commands behind the --features extra build-flag. This affects:
    • str camel-case
    • str kebab-case
    • str pascal-case
    • str screaming-snake-case
    • str snake-case
    • str title-case
  • #10053 make the charpage optional for std clip
  • #10023 The output of the scope commands has changed

Internal breaking change only affecting plugin authors

  • #9927 Make Value::columns return slice instead of cloned Vec

Full changelog

Nushell

Extension

Documentation

Nu_Scripts

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