top 5 nushell hacks (#1400)

Author: fdncred

assets/images/nushell_hacks_01.png

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+---
+title: Top 5 Nushell Hacks
+author: The Nu Authors
+author_site: https://twitter.com/nu_shell
+author_image: https://www.nushell.sh/blog/images/nu_logo.png
+excerpt: Here are the top 5 nushell hacks.
+---
+
+# Nushell Hacks
+
+Listed below are the top nushell hacks that people often forget about or didn't know.
+
+## 1. ends-with / starts-with operators
+```nushell
+❯ ls | where name ends-with .toml or name starts-with Car
+╭─#─┬────────name─────────┬─type─┬───size───┬────modified────╮
+│ 0 │ Cargo.lock          │ file │ 165.4 KB │ 22 minutes ago │
+│ 1 │ Cargo.toml          │ file │   6.4 KB │ an hour ago    │
+│ 2 │ Cross.toml          │ file │    666 B │ an hour ago    │
+│ 3 │ rust-toolchain.toml │ file │   1.1 KB │ an hour ago    │
+╰───┴─────────────────────┴──────┴──────────┴────────────────╯
+```
+
+## 2. easter egg
+
+Did you know that when you start nushell, the `$env.CMD_DURATION_MS` value of 0823 is an easter egg? [It's nushell's first pubic release date month day](https://github.com/nushell/nushell/releases/tag/0.2.0).
+
+## 3. abbr
+
+With this menu and keybinding configured appropriately in your config.nu file, you can hit `ctrl+space` and your alias abbreviation will expand to it's non-abbreviated form.
+
+For instance, if you have this alias
+```nushell
+alias gwch = git whatchanged -p --abbrev-commit --pretty=medium
+```
+and then you type `gwch<ctrl+space>` it will expand on the prompt line to 
+```nushell
+git whatchanged -p --abbrev-commit --pretty=medium
+```
+
+### keybinding
+```js
+  {
+    name: abbr
+    modifier: control
+    keycode: space
+    mode: [emacs, vi_normal, vi_insert]
+    event: [
+    { send: menu name: abbr_menu }
+    { edit: insertchar, value: ' '}
+    ]
+  }
+```
+### menu
+```js
+    {
+      name: abbr_menu
+      only_buffer_difference: false
+      marker: "👀 "
+      type: {
+        layout: columnar
+        columns: 1
+        col_width: 20
+        col_padding: 2
+      }
+      style: {
+        text: green
+        selected_text: green_reverse
+        description_text: yellow
+      }
+      source: { |buffer, position|
+        scope aliases
+        | where name == $buffer
+        | each { |it| {value: $it.expansion }}
+      }
+    }
+```
+## 4. case-insensitive `where` with `ls`
+
+People often forget that the `=~` and `!~` are regular expression operators, which means you can do a case-insensitive search like this.
+
+```nushell
+❯ ls | where name =~ '(?i)car'
+╭─#─┬────name────┬─type─┬───size───┬────modified────╮
+│ 0 │ Cargo.lock │ file │ 160.6 KB │ 8 hours ago    │
+│ 1 │ Cargo.toml │ file │   6.4 KB │ 8 hours ago    │
+│ 2 │ car.txt    │ file │      0 B │ 11 seconds ago │
+╰───┴────────────┴──────┴──────────┴────────────────╯
+```
+
+## 5. the magic of nushell datatype closures
+
+In your config.nu file you can have themes that color nushell datatypes a particular color. One thing that is sometimes overlooked is that these colors can also be closures, like the one below for `string`.
+
+```nushell
+string: {|| if $in =~ '^#[a-fA-F\d]+' { $in } else { 'default' } }
+```
+
+This allows nushell to detect anything that looks like a hex color and display that color in nushell.
+
+This allows you to take a file like the x11 rgb.txt file and parse it into colors.
+
+rgb.txt
+```nushell
+❯ open ~/Downloads/rgb.txt | lines | last 10
+╭───┬───────────────────────────────────╮
+│ 0 │ 139   0   0        DarkRed        │
+│ 1 │ 144 238 144        light green    │
+│ 2 │ 144 238 144        LightGreen     │
+│ 3 │ 220  20  60        crimson        │
+│ 4 │  75   0 130        indigo         │
+│ 5 │ 128 128   0        olive          │
+│ 6 │ 102  51 153        rebecca purple │
+│ 7 │ 102  51 153        RebeccaPurple  │
+│ 8 │ 192 192 192        silver         │
+│ 9 │   0 128 128        teal           │
+╰───┴───────────────────────────────────╯
+```
+And after parsing the file looks similar to this.
+![rgb](../assets/images/nushell_hacks_01.png)