# Working with Tables

[[toc]]

## Overview

One of the common ways of seeing data in Nu is through a table. Nu comes with a number of commands for working with tables to make it convenient to find what you're looking for, and for narrowing down the data to just what you need.

To start off, let's get a table that we can use:

```nu
ls
# => ───┬───────────────┬──────┬─────────┬────────────
# =>  # │ 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
# => ───┴───────────────┴──────┴─────────┴────────────
```

::: tip Changing how tables are displayed
Nu will try to expands all table's structure by default. You can change this behavior by changing the `display_output` hook.
See [hooks](/book/hooks.md#changing-how-output-is-displayed) for more information.
:::

## Sorting the Data

We can sort a table by calling the [`sort-by`](/commands/docs/sort-by.md) command and telling it which columns we want to use in the sort. Let's say we wanted to sort our table by the size of the file:

```nu
ls | sort-by size
# => ───┬───────────────┬──────┬─────────┬────────────
# =>  # │ 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
# =>  5 │ lite_parse.rs │ File │  6.3 KB │ 5 days ago
# =>  6 │ parse.rs      │ File │ 49.8 KB │ 1 day ago
# => ───┴───────────────┴──────┴─────────┴────────────
```

We can sort a table by any column that can be compared. For example, we could also have sorted the above using the "name", "accessed", or "modified" columns.

For more info on sorting, see [Sorting](/book/sorting.md).

## Selecting the Data you Want

::: tip Note
The following is a basic overview. For a more in-depth discussion of this topic, see the chapter, [Navigating and Accessing Structured Data](/book/navigating_structured_data.md).
:::

We can select data from a table by choosing to select specific columns or specific rows. Let's [`select`](/commands/docs/select.md) a few columns from our table to use:

```nu
ls | select name size
# => ───┬───────────────┬─────────
# =>  # │ name          │ size
# => ───┼───────────────┼─────────
# =>  0 │ files.rs      │  4.6 KB
# =>  1 │ lib.rs        │   330 B
# =>  2 │ lite_parse.rs │  6.3 KB
# =>  3 │ parse.rs      │ 49.8 KB
# =>  4 │ path.rs       │  2.1 KB
# =>  5 │ shapes.rs     │  4.7 KB
# =>  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