nushell / nushell/nushell.github.io

Documentation: A "Coming from Perl" section

Open
#1,843 7 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
258
Forks
561
Avg merge
3h 20m
Merged PRs (30d)
15

Description

Related problem

The "Coming from " sections of the Nushell book are a great idea, but there is an obvious "other language" missing- Perl.

As a solution that aims to bridge the gap between shells and programming languages the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister (PERL) seems to me the natural ancestor/competitor of Nushell. Perl may be long in the tooth but it is still a very widely used tool on Linux / Unix based systems, and has a lot of features designed specifically to make it work well as a "glue" language.

It's not obvious (at least to me as a user new to Nushell) how some of the things Perl can do can be accomplished in Nushell, some specific "getting started" help would be useful.

Describe the solution you'd like

A documentation section on "Coming from Perl" could help open up Nushell to areas where Perl has been the "swiss army knife" of system automation for years.

As an example, it would be particularly helpful to have idiomatic Nushell alternatives for the Perl "special variables" including-

$0    $PROGRAM_NAME        Pathname of the current script
$$    $PID                 The pid of the process running the current script
$^T   $BASETIME            Timestamp when the current process started
$<    $UID                 Real user ID (uid) of this process
$>    $EUID                Effective user ID of this process
$(    $GID                 Real group ID
$)    $EGID                Effective group ID
$!    $ERRNO / $OS_ERROR   Number or text of the error from the last system call
$?    $CHILD_ERROR         Status returned by the last child process
Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context and details

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the Nushell book's existing "Coming from " sections and read their structure and examples. Add a comparable "Coming from Perl" section with idiomatic Nushell alternatives for the listed Perl special variables, then verify it matches the book's documentation style and navigation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
perl
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.