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1. Shell

Nushell is a shell, so you can use it for usual shell tasks like walking around a filesystem and running commands. We are not POSIX-compatible, however, so some familiar syntax won't work. A big part of a shell is the REPL user experience. For that, we have our own line editor (reedline) and support things like custom completions, syntax highlighting, vi editing mode, etc.

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2. Programming Language

Our goal is to enable growing your one-liners and short scripts into full-scaled programs. This means we had to take a disciplined approach to scoping and mutability, and added features typically found in other programming languages, like modules and types. Instead of functions, in Nushell you write custom commands that are called using the familiar command call syntax with flags, etc. We don't have "eval", like other dynamic languages.

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3. Structured Data

Just like in other shells, commands can communicate via pipes, but instead of text, they share structured data. For example, `ls` gives you a table. Since our commands do not need to (de)serialize data from/to text, it brings us closer to the original Unix philosophy of making "one program do one thing and do it well". It also allows greater interoperability since all commands share the same interface.

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3. Structured data (continued)

Nushell includes converters to/from common formats like JSON or TOML. We have our own object notation, NUON, which is like JSON, but less strict and more compact for tables. In fact, JSON is a subset of Nushell, so any JSON file is a valid NUON and therefore a valid Nushell. We also keep experimenting with more complex data support. Currently, Nushell has plugins for interacting with SQL databases and polars dataframes.

5/N

Nushell also takes cross-platform seriously. The same script should work the same on any platform (except for obvious differences, like `exec`). This sometimes means we have to hold back in our design

And finally, Nushell aims to be friendly and fun! It sure is rough on the edges, which is reflected in the fact that it is still in version 0.x, and maintained by a small team of busy volunteers. Still, we try to do our best to eventually stabilize Nushell and bring it to 1.0.

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