this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
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I've been trying nushell and words fail me. It's like it was made for actual humans to use! 🤯 🤯 🤯

It even repeats the column headers at the end of the table if the output takes more than your screen...

Trying to think of how to do the same thing with awk/grep/sort/whatever is giving me a headache. Actually just thinking about awk is giving me a headache. I think I might be allergic.

I'm really curious, what's your favorite shell? Have you tried other shells than your distro's default one? Are you an awk wizard or do you run away very fast whenever it's mentioned?

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[–] bastion@feddit.nl 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I like nushell, but I love xonsh. Xonsh is the bastard love child of Python and Bash.

it can be thought of as:

  • try this statement in Python
  • if there's an exception, try it in bash.

Now, that's not a very accurate description, because the reality is more nuanced, but it allows for things like:

for file in !(find | grep -i '[.]mp3^'):
    file = Path(file.strip())
    if file != Path('.') and file != file.with_suffix('.mp3'):
    mv @(file) @(file.with_suffix('.mp3'))

Now, there are things in there I wouldn't bother with normally - like, rather than using mv, I'd just use file.rename(), but the snippet shows a couple of the tools for interaction between xonsh and sh.

  • !(foo) - if writing python, execute foo, and return lines
  • @(foo) - if writing sh, substitute with the value of the foo variable.

But, either a line is treated in a pyhony way, or in a shelly way - and if a line is shelly, you can reference Python variables or expressions via @(), and if it's Pythony, you can execute shell code with !() or $(), returning the lines or the exact value, respectively.

Granted, I love python and like shell well enough, and chimeras are my jam, so go figure.

[–] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does this offer anything of pure python?

[–] bastion@feddit.nl 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's a superset of python, so valid python should run fine. Imports into your shell are doable, too -- for example, I import path.Path in my xonshrc, so it's always available when I hit the shell. I don't often have to use Path, because regular shell commands are often more straightforward. But when I do, it's nice to have it already loaded. Granted, that could get kooky, depending on what you import and execute.

You can associate/shebang Xonsh with .xsh files, or run "xonsh foo.xsh" - and that works like "bash foo.sh" would, except using xonsh syntax, of course.

It's not Bash compatible - copypasta of scripts may not work out. But it's a good shell with some typical shell semantics.

there are some great plugins, too - like autovox, which allows you to create python venvs associated with specific subfolders. so, cd myproject does the equivalent of cd myproject; . path/to/venv/bin/activate.

overall, there definitely is some jank, but it's a great tool and I love it.

Hm. That sounds delightful. I do think once your script hits a not one liner level of complexity, python is a logical next step.

Does it provide any useful stuff to Python itself? Would I like, derive any benefit to writing a script in xonsh over pure python?

[–] priapus@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Xonsh is also a really cool option. If I used Python more regularly and was more comfortable using it without having to look stuff up, I'd probably use it over Nushell.

[–] bastion@feddit.nl 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, I think if I wasn't familiar with Python, it'd be nushell all the way.