Standard Library (Preview)

Nushell ships with a standard library of useful commands written in native Nu. By default, the standard library is loaded into memory (but not automatically imported) when Nushell starts.

The standard library currently includes:

  • Assertions
  • An alternative help system with support for completions.
  • Additional JSON variant formats
  • XML Access
  • Logging
  • And more

To see a complete list of the commands available in the standard library, run the following:

use std
scope commands
| where name =~ '^std '
| select name usage extra_usage
| wrap "std-lib"

In addition, stdlib-candidate, found in the nu_scripts Repository, serves as a staging ground for new commands before they are added to the standard library.

Note

Currently, parsing of the standard library impacts Nushell startup time. New commands are not being added to the library until this is resolved.

To disable the standard library, you can start using:

nu --no-std-lib

You will not be able to import the library using use std *, nor use any of its commands, if it is disabled in this way.

Did You Know?

Because the standard library is simply composed of custom commands in modules and submodules, you can see the source for each command with the view source command. For example, to view the source for the ellie command (with syntax highlighting):

use std *
view source ellie | nu-highlight