Selecting and Extracting Data from Tables

# => 6 │ signature.rs │ 1.2 KB # => ───┴───────────────┴───────── ``` This helps to create a table that's more focused on what we need. Next, let's say we want to only look at the 5 smallest files in this directory: ```nu ls | sort-by size | first 5 # => ───┬──────────────┬──────┬────────┬──────────── # => # │ name │ type │ size │ modified # => ───┼──────────────┼──────┼────────┼──────────── # => 0 │ lib.rs │ File │ 330 B │ 5 days ago # => 1 │ signature.rs │ File │ 1.2 KB │ 5 days ago # => 2 │ path.rs │ File │ 2.1 KB │ 5 days ago # => 3 │ files.rs │ File │ 4.6 KB │ 5 days ago # => 4 │ shapes.rs │ File │ 4.7 KB │ 5 days ago # => ───┴──────────────┴──────┴────────┴──────────── ``` You'll notice we first sort the table by size to get to the smallest file, and then we use the `first 5` to return the first 5 rows of the table. You can also [`skip`](/commands/docs/skip.md) rows that you don't want. Let's skip the first two of the 5 rows we returned above: ```nu ls | sort-by size | first 5 | skip 2 # => ───┬───────────┬──────┬────────┬──────────── # => # │ name │ type │ size │ modified # => ───┼───────────┼──────┼────────┼──────────── # => 0 │ path.rs │ File │ 2.1 KB │ 5 days ago # => 1 │ files.rs │ File │ 4.6 KB │ 5 days ago # => 2 │ shapes.rs │ File │ 4.7 KB │ 5 days ago # => ───┴───────────┴──────┴────────┴──────────── ``` We've narrowed it to three rows we care about. Let's look at a few other commands for selecting data. You may have wondered why the rows of the table are numbers. This acts as a handy way to get to a single row. Let's sort our table by the file name and then pick one of the rows with the [`select`](/commands/docs/select.md) command using its row number: ```nu ls | sort-by name # => ───┬───────────────┬──────┬─────────┬──────────── # => # │ name │ type │ size │ modified # => ───┼───────────────┼──────┼─────────┼──────────── # => 0 │ files.rs │ File │ 4.6 KB │ 5 days ago # => 1 │ lib.rs │ File │ 330 B │ 5 days ago # => 2 │ lite_parse.rs │ File │ 6.3 KB │ 5 days ago # => 3 │ parse.rs │ File │ 49.8 KB │ 1 day ago # => 4 │ path.rs │ File │ 2.1 KB │ 5 days ago # => 5 │ shapes.rs │ File │ 4.7 KB │ 5 days ago # => 6 │ signature.rs │ File │ 1.2 KB │ 5 days ago # => ───┴───────────────┴──────┴─────────┴──────────── ls | sort-by name | select 5 # => ───┬───────────────┬──────┬─────────┬──────────── # => # │ name │ type │ size │ modified # => ───┼───────────────┼──────┼─────────┼──────────── # => 0 │ shapes.rs │ File │ 4.7 KB │ 5 days ago # => ───┴───────────────┴──────┴─────────┴──────────── ``` ## Getting Data out of a Table So far, we've worked with tables by trimming the table down to only what we need. Sometimes we may want to go a step further and only look at the values in the cells themselves rather than taking a whole column. Let's say, for example, we wanted to only get a list of the names of the files. For this, we use the [`get`](/commands/docs/get.md) command: ```nu ls | get name # => ───┬─────────────── # => 0 │ files.rs # => 1 │ lib.rs # => 2 │ lite_parse.rs # => 3 │ parse.rs # => 4 │ path.rs # => 5 │ shapes.rs # => 6 │ signature.rs # => ───┴─────────────── ``` We now have the values for each of the filenames. This might look like the [`select`](/commands/docs/select.md) command we saw earlier, so let's put that here as well to compare the two: ```nu ls | select name # => ───┬─────────────── # => # │ name # => ───┼─────────────── # => 0 │ files.rs # => 1 │ lib.rs # => 2 │ lite_parse.rs # => 3 │ parse.rs # => 4 │ path.rs # => 5 │ shapes.rs # => 6 │ signature.rs # => ───┴─────────────── ``` These look very similar! Let's see if we can spell out the difference between these two commands to make it clear: - [`select`](/commands/docs/select.md) - creates a new table which includes only the columns specified - [`get`](/commands/docs/get.md) - returns the values inside the column specified as a list

This section explains how to select specific rows from a table using `skip` and how to access individual rows using their index with the `select` command. It also demonstrates how to extract data from a table's column using the `get` command, contrasting it with the `select` command, which creates a new table with only the specified columns.