Nushell 0.104.0

Today, we're releasing version 0.104.0 of Nu. This release adds additional job control capabilities, many datetime improvements, and a number of new Polars commands.

Thank you to all those who have contributed to this release through the PRs below, issues and suggestions leading to those changes, and Discord discussions.

Where to get it

Nu 0.104.0 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 Nushell.

Table of contents

• Highlights and themes of this release
  • New Job-Control Features
    • Inter-Job Messaging (Experimental)
    • Job tags
  • New datetime and duration Features
    • New date from-human command
    • into datetime now accepts a record
    • into duration now accepts a record
    • into datetime --format can now parse dates and times separately
    • into duration now accepts floats
  • New Polars commands
• Changes
  • Additions
    • kill now accepts list spreading
    • Custom indicator for missing table values
    • Some math commands now work with bounded ranges
    • The executable directory is now added to $NU_PLUGIN_DIRS by default
    • env-conversions helpers added to the standard library
    • Proxy support for http commands
    • Tab completion when importing the standard library and its exports
    • New columns available from ps -l on macOS
    • LSP: Snippet-style completions
    • debug --raw-value
    • More info from describe --detailed
    • Support PATHEXT for additional extensions on Windows
    • Execute Nushell scripts on the Path in Windows
    • New flag glob --follow-symlinks
    • Substring match algorithm
  • Breaking changes
    • Parse human date time explicitly
    • str join formatting for datetime values has changed
    • history with sqlite uses datetimes now
    • date is now datetime
  • Deprecations
    • positional completer option
  • Removals
    • Removed -s and -p in do
  • Bug fixes and other changes
• Notes for plugin developers
  • Convert IoError into LabeledError
  • New Repo for Plugin Examples
• Hall of fame
• Full changelog

Highlights and themes of this release [toc]

New Job-Control Features [toc]

Inter-Job Messaging (Experimental) [toc]

Jobs can now communicate with other jobs. The following commands were added in #15253:

• job send
• job recv
• job flush
• job id

See help job <subcommand> for details.

Job tags [toc]

Jobs can now be tagged using job tag, added in #15555.

New datetime and duration Features [toc]

Thanks to @LoicRiegel for a number of datetime and duration features in this release:

New date from-human command [toc]

The new date from-human command introduced in #15495 is now used to parse human-language date forms like "tomorrow" into datetime values.

date from-human "next Friday at 6pm"
# => 2025-04-18T18:00:00+02:00

The equivalent functionality from into datetime has been removed from that command.

into datetime now accepts a record [toc]

With #15455, it is now possible to construct a datetime from a record input. If the timezone is not specified, the locale is used:

{ year: 2025, month: 3, day: 30, hour: 12, minute: 15, second: 59, timezone: '+02:00' } | into datetime
# => Sun, 30 Mar 2025 12:15:59 +0200 (2 weeks ago)

into duration now accepts a record [toc]

With #15600, it is now possible to construct a datetime from a record input. If the timezone is not specified, the local is used:

{ week: 10, day: 1, hour: 2, minute: 3, second: 4, millisecond: 5, microsecond: 6, nanosecond: 7, sign: '-' } | into duration
# => -10wk 1day 2hr 3min 4sec 5ms 6µs 7ns

into datetime --format can now parse dates and times separately [toc]

Previously, into datetime --format required both a date and a time. With #15544, each can be created separately. The system's local timezone will be used by default.

For example, to parse a DD/MM/YYYY:

"25/03/2024" | into datetime --format "%d/%m/%Y"
# => Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100 (a year ago)

into duration now accepts floats [toc]

With #15297, into duration now accepts floats as a valid input type:

1.5day | into duration
# => 1day 12hr

New Polars commands [toc]

The following polars commands have been added in this release:

• polars join_where (#15635 by @MMesch)
• polars cut and polars qcut for binning (#15431 by @ayax79)
• polars into-schema (#15534) by @ayax79)
• polars dtype (#15529 by @ayax79, which also adds the NuDataType custom type)
• polars replace-time-zone (#15538 by @pyz4)
• polars convert-time-zone (#15550 by @pyz4)
• polars over (#15551 by @pyz4)
• polars truncate (#15582 by @pyz4)

Changes [toc]

Additions [toc]

kill now accepts list spreading [toc]

In #15558 from @Mrfiregem, the signature of the kill command was changed so that it can accept multiple arguments via the list spreading operator. For example:

ps | where name == bash | kill ...$in.pid

Custom indicator for missing table values [toc]

Missing values (not null) are represented by ❎ in tables. #15647 from @Bahex makes this indicator configurable. For example:

$env.config.table.missing_value_symbol = " ∅ "

Some math commands now work with bounded ranges [toc]

With #15319 from @LoicRiegel, the following commands have been updated to allow bounded ranges as input:

• math abs
• math ceil
• math floor
• math log
• math round

When passed a range input, the command is applied to each item of the range, thus producing a list of numbers as output.

Example:

-2.2..2.5 | math floor
# => ╭───┬────╮
# => │ 0 │ -3 │
# => │ 1 │ -2 │
# => │ 2 │ -1 │
# => │ 3 │  0 │
# => │ 4 │  1 │
# => ╰───┴────╯

The executable directory is now added to $NU_PLUGIN_DIRS by default [toc]

Many distributions (including our binary distributions) place plugins in the same directory as the Nushell executable. With #15380 from @NotTheDr01ds, plugins in this type of environment will now work out-of-the-box using plugin add.

env-conversions helpers added to the standard library [toc]

Previously, the default $env.ENV_CONVERSION for PATH could be "reused" in other path-related conversions. In a previous release, this conversion was removed and became Rust-based. #15569 by @NotTheDr01ds adds the equivalent helper to the standard library so that it can be easily used.

Proxy support for http commands [toc]

With #15597 from @scarlet-storm, commands like http get can now utilize a proxy using environment variables.

Tab completion when importing the standard library and its exports [toc]

With #15270, @blindFS enabled tab-completion for the standard library and its exports with the use (and related) commands.

New columns available from ps -l on macOS [toc]

#15341 from @fdncred adds the following columns to ps -l on macOS:

• user_id
• priority
• process_threads

LSP: Snippet-style completions [toc]

In #15494, @blindFS added the ability for completions of built-in commands to insert a snippet with placeholders for its arguments.

In addition, you'll find numerous LSP fixes below from @blindFS.

debug --raw-value [toc]

@fdncred added a --raw-value option to the debug command in 15581 to allow retrieval of only the debug string part of the Nushell value.

More info from describe --detailed [toc]

In #15591, @fdncred added more details to the describe --detailed output, including the Rust data type, the Nushell data type, and the value.

Support PATHEXT for additional extensions on Windows [toc]

With the changes in #15611 by @hfrentzel, Nushell will now automatically attempt to execute scripts using any extension found in the PATHEXT environment variable on Windows.

Execute Nushell scripts on the Path in Windows [toc]

Also, with #15486 from @mztikk, Nushell scripts can be more easily executed from any directory in the Path.

New flag glob --follow-symlinks [toc]

@sebasnallar added --follow-symlinks to ... follow symlinks when globbing (#15626)

Substring match algorithm [toc]

In #15511, @vansh284 added the option to use substring matching for completions. Previously, only prefix and fuzzy matching were allowed. Users can now set $env.config.completions.algorithm to "substring" to enable this.

Custom completers already had the ability to use substring matching by setting positional: false in their options. However, positional has now been deprecated, and completers should set completion_algorithm: "substring" to maintain the same behavior.

Breaking changes [toc]

Parse human date time explicitly [toc]

into datetime used to parse not only strictly formatted date time strings, but also human readable ones. This created some situations where unexpected values might result from into datetime. This functionality has been removed.

Instead, users can now explicitly choose to opt-in to that functionality using the new date from-human command added in #15495 by @LoicRiegel.

str join formatting for datetime values has changed [toc]

When a datetime is passed to str join, the resulting format of the string has changed. With #15629 from @LoicRiegel, it will now format positive dates using RFC2822 and negative dates using RFC3339.

This could be a breaking change if you depend on a particular format of the output of str join. Consider using format date before str join.

history with sqlite uses datetimes now [toc]

Previously, the history command would return a start_timestamp with a string when using the SQLite backend. With #15630, it now returns an actual Nushell datetime.

If you were previously relying on a string value from that column, you can easily convert it using format date.

date is now datetime [toc]

The describe command previously incorrectly reported datetime values as date. This has been fixed in #15264.

If you were previously checking the type of a value using describe, you should change occurrences of date to datetime.

Deprecations [toc]

positional completer option [toc]

The positional option available to custom completers has been deprecated. See the section about the Substring match algorithm above for details.

Removals [toc]

Removed -s and -p in do [toc]

We deprecated the -s and -p flags and planned to remove them in version 0.102.0. We forgot about it for a couple of releases, but #15456 by WindSoilder finally completes this removal.

Bug fixes and other changes [toc]

Notes for plugin developers [toc]

Convert IoError into LabeledError [toc]

In version 0.102.0 IoErrors were added on top of std::io::Errors. @132ikl made it easier in #15327 to return these in SimplePluginCommands.

New Repo for Plugin Examples [toc]

@cptpiepmatz has created a new repository for plugin examples. It includes various examples demonstrating how to write plugins with different features and in multiple languages, including Nu. The existing plugin examples in the main repository will be moved there soon.

Hall of fame [toc]

Thanks to all the contributors below for helping us solve issues, improve documentation, refactor code, and more! 🙏

Full changelog [toc]