nu

nushell, a modern shell with structured data

TLDR

Start Nushell

$ nu

Execute command

$ nu -c "[command]"

Run script

$ nu [script.nu]

List files as table

$ ls | where size > 1mb

Parse JSON

$ open [file.json] | get [field]

nu is Nushell, a cross-platform shell that treats every command's output as structured data (tables, records, lists) flowing through a pipeline. Built-ins parse common formats (JSON, YAML, TOML, CSV, SQLite, ODS, XLSX, XML, NDJSON) into the same table type, so commands such as `where`, `sort-by`, `select`, `group-by`, and `histogram` work uniformly across data sources.Pipelines pass typed values rather than byte streams, which makes data wrangling expressive but means traditional Unix pipes mixing arbitrary byte streams behave differently — wrap external commands with `^cmd` to get raw stdout, or use `into binary` / `into string` for explicit conversions.

PARAMETERS

SCRIPT

Nushell script (file ending in .nu) to execute. Remaining positional arguments are accessible as `$argv`.

-c, --commands COMMAND

Run the given Nushell command string and exit.

--config FILE

Load FILE instead of the default `config.nu`.

--env-config FILE

Load FILE as the environment-setup config (`env.nu`).

--login, -l

Start as a login shell (sources `login.nu`).

--interactive, -i

Force interactive mode even when stdin is not a TTY.

--no-config-file, -n

Skip loading any config files.

--no-std-lib

Skip loading the bundled standard library.

--stdin

Read script from stdin.

--table-mode, -m MODE

Set the table rendering mode (e.g. rounded, heavy, light, compact, none).

--log-level LEVEL

Set the log level (trace, debug, info, warn, error).

--ide-check N

IDE-friendly syntax check of the input.

-h, --help

Display help information.

-v, --version

Display version.

CONFIGURATION

$nu.default-config-dir/config.nu

Per-user configuration (typically ~/.config/nushell/config.nu).

$nu.default-config-dir/env.nu

Per-user environment variable setup, sourced before `config.nu`.

INSTALL

sudo dnf install nushell

sudo pacman -S nushell

sudo apk add nushell

sudo zypper install nushell

brew install nushell

nix profile install nixpkgs#nushell

CAVEATS

Not POSIX-compatible — scripts written for bash/zsh will not run unmodified. Configuration files use Nushell's own language. Plugin protocol and built-in command names still change between minor releases (Nushell is pre-1.0); pin a version when scripting.

HISTORY

Nushell was created in 2019 by Jonathan Turner, Yehuda Katz, and Andrés Robalino to bring PowerShell-style structured pipelines to a Unix-friendly, Rust-implemented shell. It is currently maintained by the Nushell Project under the MIT license.

nu