this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
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I must have died and gone to heaven [nushell] (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/linux@programming.dev
32 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

OC by @phantomwise@lemmy.ml

I've been trying nushell and words fail me. It's like it was made for actual humans to use! 🀯 🀯 🀯

It even repeats the column headers at the end of the table if the output takes more than your screen...

Trying to think of how to do the same thing with awk/grep/sort/whatever is giving me a headache. Actually just thinking about awk is giving me a headache. I think I might be allergic.

I'm really curious, what's your favorite shell? Have you tried other shells than your distro's default one? Are you an awk wizard or do you run away very fast whenever it's mentioned?

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[–] baduhai@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 hours ago

'Cause it was quarter past eleven

[–] BetterDev@programming.dev 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Like it was made for actual humans to use!

This is othering to the rest of us that just read manuals, understand how the tools work, and like them just fine.

Its fine to like nushell, no hate here, but you don't have to dis what works (and has worked) for almost everyone else for so long.

What about: "wow I am really impressed with the QOL features in nushell!" Instead of "everyone who doesnt like this is not human"?

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 points 4 hours ago

I genuinely can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 day ago (3 children)

That's basically how Powershell works.

*ducks*

[–] Septimaeus 9 points 1 day ago

Most bash fans I’ve known carve out an exception for powershell from their overall critique of windows. Personally, I think it’s not a fair comparison considering how god fucking awful everything else is in windows, but I do agree that it’s a decent shell.

[–] e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This might be unpopular in Linux spaces but I consider Powershell for the most part well designed. I think its better suited to writing scripts than bash, but worse at being an interactive shell.

[–] AdamBomb@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 hours ago

A worse interactive shell than bash? No way, I find PowerShell closer to fish for interactive use.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 15 hours ago

It's essentially an object oriented shell. It's actually pretty good. But yeah, error outputs are a pain to read.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

better suited to writing scripts than bash, but worse at being an interactive shell

And that's totally fine. Different tools for use cases. πŸ‘ŒπŸ’ͺ

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah it was inspired by Powershell. But it also has syntax that isn't completely awful.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

what-do-you-mean-awful-syntax ?

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 4 points 13 hours ago

Ha-Ha -exactly

[–] stewie410@programming.dev 8 points 1 day ago

Doesn't look nearly as verbose either

[–] f@quokk.au 4 points 1 day ago

Remember to subscribe or post in https://programming.dev/c/nushell or other communities on the fediverse!

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Uh, this is dumb. I installed it and did a few things I would do on a normal basis. You're telling me that this is not supported? It's absolutely insane.

[–] Oinks@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Nu's find builtin isn't a GNU find repacement. I think what you actually want is ls piped into where:

ls **/* | where type == file

I do question the choice to alias a well-known program with a builtin that does something entirely different. You can also use ^find to avoid calling the builtin. I would've expected \find (bash-like) or command find (fish-like) to work as well, but alas...

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I don't think that's what I'd actually want, no. I want GNU find functionality for this to be a viable shell replacement. It's... neat, but it's no daily driver.

back to /bin/zsh for me!

[–] chrash0@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

you can absolutely do what you want. GNU find is external and since it conflicts with a builtin can be aliased or referenced like ^find.

the syntax is new for sure, and it’s not for everyone.

been daily driving for over a year

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I prefer flow to futz. Thanks for the info. Glad it's working for you. I'm staying with what works well for me.

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 points 4 hours ago

You could also just alias find back to ^find. I don't use nushell as my daily driver for other reasons, and I agree with the comment above that it's a bit questionable for them to have a built-in with that name, but I don't understand why you'd even try out a new shell, let alone one that's radically different from POSIX-style shells, much less complain online about the shell you just tried, when you're already happy with the shell you're using and are not willing to adapt any habits or explore the configuration options to match your needs.

[–] dice@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago

I switched from GNU find to fd 2 years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, this unlocked nu as a daily driver, which I’ve really enjoyed for the past year. I do fire up zsh semi-regularly when needed to escape some hairbrained corners. Scripting in nu is very nice thanks to the data manipulation and closure support. So nice to move from text manipulation to semantic structuring.

[–] cosmicrose@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago

They kinda have to replace some coreutils like find from scratch to be compatible with their philosophy of piping data tables instead of text. It’s super cool and ends up being really powerful but yeah it’s a whole new ecosystem which makes it pretty much impossible to be a drop-in shell replacement.

[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago

You can use both.

[–] wander1236@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The commands are object-based instead of text based. The philosophy is built around chaining commands to filter data. I'm pretty sure the nushell command would be ls ./ | where type == file

find in nushell looks like it's more for filtering the output of previous commands, not as a file search.

https://www.nushell.sh/commands/docs/ls.html

https://www.nushell.sh/commands/docs/find.html

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

not my jam, but I appreciate that. I used to do 'find ./ | grep -i string' forever. I've come to prefer the more robust usage of 'find' these days, -type, -iname, etc.

[–] cosmicrose@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 day ago

Nushell is so cool! I’m happy it’s still progressing; I was worried it would die out because it’s such a leap from existing shells that they kinda need to develop an ecosystem from scratch. Piping actual data tables between commands is brilliant. I’ve tried using it as a daily driver but it takes some work to convert existing dot files and scripts. I might try it again.

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago

Neat. After reading the docs for a bit, it seemed like the sort of shell that would be made by Rust programmers. What do you know, that guess is correct.

[–] ConstantPain@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The "sort-by name" didn't work as expected though...

[–] goddard_guryon@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago

Looking at the screenshot, I'd guess it sorted by the ASCII values of the characters, so processes with capitalized names come up first. Still not the ideal sorting, but at least makes some sense.

[–] bitchkat@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Explain?

[–] Geometrinen_Gepardi@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

It looks like powershell, but even nicer.

[–] HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago

I love nu, but I know it's a lot for people. I can't go back to bash anymore.