Exploring Nushell, a Rust-powered, cross-platform shell
Blog post from LogRocket
Nushell is a modern, cross-platform shell built with Rust, offering a performance-driven and extensible alternative to traditional shells like Bash, PowerShell, and Zsh. It emphasizes working with structured data, providing output in tabular formats for commands such as `ls` and `open`, and supports streaming command outputs using pipelines. Nushell is designed to be user-friendly with a detailed documentation, allowing for easy creation and management of plugins, and features its own scripting language called Nu, which supports mutable, immutable, and constant variables. While it brings benefits like enhanced data structuring and customization, Nushell lacks the widespread community support and integration found in more established shells. It can be installed via various package managers on different operating systems, and although it offers a rich user interface, resource-intensive tasks may still require alternative shells. Despite being a relatively new entrant, Nushell stands out for its modern approach and the ability to handle structured data efficiently, though it may not yet replace deeply integrated shells like PowerShell.