finally. a unix powershell. everything is an object.
Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
181–190 of 252 posts
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#182“Ask and ye shell receive”: I swear I was just complaining about bash, zsh and the lot the other day saying that we needed a modern alternative shell without ridiculous names and design choices. Installing this tonight! So excited!
Hope you enjoy it! The Nushell Discord is pretty active if you have any questions: https://discord.gg/NtAbbGn
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#183Just was trying it. A couple minutes in, I discovered it doesn't support suspended jobs.
:( seems like that would be a very basic feature.
https://github.com/nushell/nushell/issues/1329
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#184Does anyone have an ELI5 for what this, BASH, ZSH, Powershell etc do? It seems it's a conflation of #1: A CLI. #2: A specialized programming language that mainly does file-system operations. Is there a compelling reason to use something like this (or Powershell's scripting system, from the comments here), vice Python or Rust's etc standard library filesystem tools? Context: I use Windows Terminal with embedded powers…
Yes, scripting languages all support both:
* A repl for performing common operations (moving around the file system, running programs, etc),
* A interpreted environment for scripting these operations.
The main reason to use these instead of Python/Rust is the ease of interfacing with other programs.
In Python, and most other non-scripting languages, spawning and interacting with external processes is quite verbose.
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
WSL is great but it’s basically a convenient VM. It’s no longer windows, as far as I’m concerned.
It’s a lightweight Hyper-V VM, just like Windows itself when you turn Hyper-V support on (boots hypervisor first, then the Windows VM in the root or parent partition)[0]. But if that’s an issue, WSL1 is still an option.[1] It’s a thin translation layer between Linux kernel calls and NT kernel calls, which was the original concept of subsystem from the early NT days which allowed OS/2 apps to run on top of ntdll.dll.…
> WSL2 didn’t replace WSL1.
It kind of did, IMO. You can still use WSL1, but my understanding is that it's a dead end; MS has given up on the translation layer approach. WSL1 will still get bugfixes but it seems pretty clear that WSL2 will get the lion's share of investment going forward.
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#186Just was trying it. A couple minutes in, I discovered it doesn't support suspended jobs. :( seems like that would be a very basic feature. https://github.com/nushell/nushell/issues/1329 https://github.com/nushell/nushell/issues/1796 https://github.com/nushell/nushell/discussions/5239
In the past, I've toured these alternate, non-POSIX shells like Nushell. A lot of them (e.g. Powershell, Elvish) don't provide job control. I looked into how job control works and it's kind of a bother, so I see why they might have elided it. I wonder if multiplexing the terminal using tmux or screen is a good enough alternative the job control for many use-cases. You do lose state (i.e. environment variables, working directory), but if all you want to do is run something else maybe it's good enough.
I personally haven't tried living without job control though.
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something I've been curious about - are there any plans to sink serious effort into massively expanding the stdlib? Powershell's syntax and object-orientation I could take or leave, but access to the entire .NET Framework is pretty hard to beat, and the same draw exists for xonsh. Nushell is neat but there just aren't enough builtins.
I don't think we're going to be able to compete with PowerShell's bajillions of developer-hours invested in deep Windows integration. But we are looking at revamping the Nu language to make it much more pleasant+powerful as a scripting language. What kinds of features are you looking for in the stdlib?
It's less any specific missing features and more the confidence that I'll literally never run into a missing feature - the things you almost never need, until you do. E.g. upcasing a Turkish string, or printing a number that does the correct thing with `,` and `.` in the user's current locale. PowerShell's support for ACLs is also hugely helpful - being able to do the structured-data thing with the icacls command would go a long way.
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#188Please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't nushell suffer from the same problem as powershell that all the nice fancy stuff works only for in-process commands and external programs are bit of a second-class citizens?
To me interesting question is that is it even possible to build rich strucure-aware shell-like cli environment that would allow seamless integration of external polyglot programs in the same vein as unix shells where only minimal amount of stuff is required to be builtins (/bin/[ is cute example).
It is a difficult problem, at minimum probably requires all compatible software to be explicitly made so. But for best experience even the basic unix fundamental of stdin/stdout/stderr+argv/env might need re-evaluation.
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#189Does anyone have an ELI5 for what this, BASH, ZSH, Powershell etc do? It seems it's a conflation of #1: A CLI. #2: A specialized programming language that mainly does file-system operations. Is there a compelling reason to use something like this (or Powershell's scripting system, from the comments here), vice Python or Rust's etc standard library filesystem tools? Context: I use Windows Terminal with embedded powers…
Shells are a combination of programming language, user interface, and standard library. The programming language and stdlib aspects are just like Python or Rust, but with a different focus: - Terseness. I can very realistically type hundreds, if not thousands, of commands per day. Extra words or punctuation marks add up quickly. - Shells are focused on executing things right now , as opposed to most other languages w…
Very clear explanation; thank you!
Re: Nushell: Introduction to a new kind of shell
#190Does anyone have an ELI5 for what this, BASH, ZSH, Powershell etc do? It seems it's a conflation of #1: A CLI. #2: A specialized programming language that mainly does file-system operations. Is there a compelling reason to use something like this (or Powershell's scripting system, from the comments here), vice Python or Rust's etc standard library filesystem tools? Context: I use Windows Terminal with embedded powers…
Yes, scripting languages all support both: * A repl for performing common operations (moving around the file system, running programs, etc), * A interpreted environment for scripting these operations. The main reason to use these instead of Python/Rust is the ease of interfacing with other programs. In Python, and most other non-scripting languages, spawning and interacting with external processes is quite verbose.
It's verbose in Rust too; error handling; various types ways to handle the program's stdout/stderr etc.