top 5 nushell hacks (#1400)

blog/2024-05-15-top-nushell-hacks.md

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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)