nushell / nushell/nushell.github.io
Documentation: A "Coming from Perl" section
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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
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- 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