I recently discovered Nushell. It’s billed as a “new kind of shell”. What caught my eye is not so much the actual shell usage: Executing commands, redirecting output, working with files, etc. I was interested in the concept of structured data:

Everything is data

Nu pipelines use structured data so you can safely select, filter, and sort the same way every time. Stop parsing strings and start solving problems.

Nushell comes with support for a variety of formats (e.g. JSON, YAML, csv):

> open package.json | get dependencies
╭──────────────────────────────────┬─────────────╮
│ @fontsource-variable/caveat      │ ^5.1.0      │
│ @fontsource-variable/raleway     │ ^5.1.0      │
│ @fortawesome/fontawesome-free    │ ^6.7.2      │
│ @hotwired/turbo-rails            │ ^8.0.12     │
│ @popperjs/core                   │ ^2.11.8     │
│ @rails/actioncable               │ ^8.0.100    │
│ @rails/activestorage             │ ^8.0.100    │
│ @rails/ujs                       │ ^7.1.3-4    │
│ @ttskch/select2-bootstrap4-theme │ ^1.5.2      │
│ autoprefixer                     │ ^10.4.20    │
│ bootstrap                        │ ^4.5.3      │
│ esbuild                          │ ^0.19.3     │
│ jquery                           │ 3.7.1       │
│ nodemon                          │ ^3.1.9      │
│ popper.js                        │ ^1.15.0     │
│ postcss                          │ ^8.4.30     │
│ postcss-cli                      │ ^10.1.0     │
│ sass                             │ ^1.67.0     │
│ select2                          │ ^4.1.0-rc.0 │
│ startbootstrap-sb-admin          │ ^6.0.2      │
╰──────────────────────────────────┴─────────────╯

Pipes can be built up:

> open package.json | get dependencies | transpose | where column0 =~ @rails
╭───┬──────────────────────┬──────────╮
│ # │       column0        │ column1  │
├───┼──────────────────────┼──────────┤
│ 0 │ @rails/actioncable   │ ^8.0.100 │
│ 1 │ @rails/activestorage │ ^8.0.100 │
│ 2 │ @rails/ujs           │ ^7.1.3-4 │
╰───┴──────────────────────┴──────────╯

Converting between formats is a breeze:

> open package.json | get dependencies | to yaml
'@fontsource-variable/caveat': ^5.1.0
'@fontsource-variable/raleway': ^5.1.0
'@fortawesome/fontawesome-free': ^6.7.2
'@hotwired/turbo-rails': ^8.0.12
'@popperjs/core': ^2.11.8
'@rails/actioncable': ^8.0.100
'@rails/activestorage': ^8.0.100
'@rails/ujs': ^7.1.3-4
'@ttskch/select2-bootstrap4-theme': ^1.5.2
autoprefixer: ^10.4.20
bootstrap: ^4.5.3
esbuild: ^0.19.3
jquery: 3.7.1
nodemon: ^3.1.9
popper.js: ^1.15.0
postcss: ^8.4.30
postcss-cli: ^10.1.0
sass: ^1.67.0
select2: ^4.1.0-rc.0
startbootstrap-sb-admin: ^6.0.2

And there is a built in explore TUI command that you can pipe data to (open file.csv | explore) to drill in and out of data interactively. Lovely.

I’m just getting started with Nushell, but already seems like a useful tool to have for data exploration and transformation.