Shells, Plural: Managing Directories and Files as Shells in Nu

------------+--------------+------------------+----------+---------- > open Cargo.toml | tags ----------+------------------------------------------ span | origin ----------+------------------------------------------ [object] | /home/sophia/Source/nushell/Cargo.toml ----------+------------------------------------------ ``` Data that flows through the pipeline gets a set of additional metadata tagged to it. We can use this later to figure out how to display the contents, show a better error message, and more. # Shells, plural Let's say you're in a directory, but you'd really like to flip back and forth between it and one or two others. You could open up multiple tabs, multiple terminals, if you're on a Unix system you could use "screen", and probably even more than that. What if the shells were just built in? In Nu, we can `enter` a directory, which adds it to a ring of shells we can bounce between: ``` > enter ../rhai/ /home/sophia/Source/rhai(master)> shells ---+---+------------+----------------------------- # | | name | path ---+---+------------+----------------------------- 0 | | filesystem | /home/sophia/Source/nushell 1 | X | filesystem | /home/sophia/Source/rhai ---+---+------------+----------------------------- ``` Using `n` and `p` we can jump back and forth between the shells. `exit` gets us out of a shell. You might noticed that `name` column in the `shells` table. Why's that there? Oh no... oh yes. ``` > enter Cargo.toml /> shells ---+---+--------------------------------------------+----------------------------- # | | name | path ---+---+--------------------------------------------+----------------------------- 0 | | filesystem | /home/sophia/Source/nushell 1 | | filesystem | /home/sophia/Source/rhai 2 | X | {/home/sophia/Source/nushell/Cargo.toml} | / ---+---+--------------------------------------------+----------------------------- ``` That's right, we're in the file. Can we `cd`? Oh yes, we can: ``` /> ls ------------+--------------+------------------+----------+---------- bin | dependencies | dev-dependencies | lib | package ------------+--------------+------------------+----------+----------

Nu allows users to manage multiple directories as shells, quickly switching between them using `enter`, `n`, and `p`. Users can also enter files, treating them as directories, and navigate their contents using commands like `ls`.