Nushell

Nushell is a Linux terminal shell that makes processing and visualizing data easier. For the chuck-stack, Nushell excels beyond others because of its preference for and usability with structured data and data pipelines.

Why We Love Nushell

Here are the reasons we love Nushell:

It is an active and welcoming project, and it is well documented.
It is open source.
You can get up and running with Nushell in a meaningful way in minutes.
It does its job (data pipelines) amazingly well.
It makes the data we need to do our jobs immediately available.
It makes creating modules, scripts and plugins significantly easier (as compared to bash and other shells).
It visualizes structured data in a terminal better than just about any other tool.
It has great synergy with the rest of the chuck-stack.

Visualize ERP Data

One of the benefits of Nushell is how it can visualize data in just about any size screen (monitor, tablet, phone, ...).

Nushell creates good information density
Nushell data visualization can be read by anyone (technical and non-technical)
Configuring/customizing what data is presented is quite simple

Here is an example:

nushell-visualize-order

Here is a json representation of the same data:

{
  "order": {
    "id": "ORD-12345",
    "customer": {
      "id": "CUST-789",
      "name": "John Smith",
      "email": "john.smith@email.com",
      "address": {
        "street": "123 Main St",
        "city": "Springfield",
        "state": "IL",
        "zip": "62701"
      }
    },
    "items": [
      {
        "id": "PROD-001",
        "name": "Coffee Mug",
        "quantity": 2,
        "price": 12.99,
        "subtotal": 25.98
      },
      {
        "id": "PROD-002",
        "name": "Tea Set",
        "quantity": 1,
        "price": 45.00,
        "subtotal": 45.00
      }
    ],
    "payment": {
      "method": "credit-card",
      "status": "completed",
      "transaction-id": "TXN-456789"
    },
    "summary": {
      "subtotal": 70.98,
      "tax": 4.26,
      "shipping": 5.99,
      "total": 81.23
    },
    "status": "processing",
    "created-at": "2023-05-15T14:30:00Z"
  }
}

Here is a KDL representation of the same data:

order "ORD-12345" {
    customer {
        id "CUST-789"
        name "John Smith"
        email "john.smith@email.com"
        address {
            street "123 Main St"
            city "Springfield"
            state "IL"
            zip "62701"
        }
    }
    items {
        item {
            id "PROD-001"
            name "Coffee Mug"
            quantity 2
            price 12.99
            subtotal 25.98
        }
        item {
            id "PROD-002"
            name "Tea Set"
            quantity 1
            price 45.00
            subtotal 45.00
        }
    }
    payment {
        method "credit-card"
        status "completed"
        transaction-id "TXN-456789"
    }
    summary {
        subtotal 70.98
        tax 4.26
        shipping 5.99
        total 81.23
    }
    status "processing"
    created-at "2023-05-15T14:30:00Z"
}

Nu Tutor

Nushell is powerful. The easiest to learn the Nushell way of thinking is using Nu's tutor. You can walk through examples by simply executing tutor from a Nushell prompt.

Notes and References

Nushell has not reached production stability yet; although, it is close. The Nushell team still introduces frequent breaking changes in an effort to enhance consistency and improve usability.
Nushell compliments PostgreSQL in that Nushell can perform many of the same data tasks as PostgreSQL without requiring data first be inserted into a database.
- Said another way, Nushell gives you many of the same data processing abilities prior to persisting it in a database.
- Nushell also makes persisting data in PostgreSQL easier.
Nushell plugin for visualizing and plotting data https://github.com/Euphrasiologist/nu_plugin_plot
- Also reference: gnuplot
Nushell demonstrations and explanations
- DevOps part 1
- DevOps part 2
Nushell using AI