nushell / nushell/nushell.github.io

Issue with terminology in Thinking in Nu page

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Description

In the "Nushell's environment is scoped" section of the Thinking in Nu page, it says that

In Nushell, blocks control their own environment. Changes to the environment are scoped to the block where they happen.

However, that's not really true for blocks technically, but it is for closures and command definitions. For example

if 1 > 0 { cd .. }

will change the current directory. You can also mutate other variables in blocks of course.


I've been trying to think up a good way to reword that section but I can't think of anything off the top of my head. It could say "commands and closures" rather than blocks, but that feels like it has less impact when talking about a significant design decision and might be a bit confusing before both concepts have really been introduced. I'm not sure there is a term or concept in Nushell at the moment that groups together commands and closures, but excludes blocks.

Anyone else have any ideas?

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Research direction

Start with the linked “Nushell's environment is scoped” section in the Thinking in Nu page, then compare its wording with the linked Blocks documentation and the documented behavior of closures and command definitions. Done means the section accurately distinguishes blocks from constructs whose environment changes are scoped, using terminology consistent with the rest of the book.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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