Working with Structured and Unstructured Data in Nushell

Nu also understands structured text files like JSON, TOML, YAML, and more. Opening these files gives us the same tables we saw with `ls` and `ps`. Again, this lets us use the same commands to filter our data, explore it, and use it. # Working with the outside world The above approach could be fun, but if we're not careful, it could become a walled garden. What happens outside of the commands Nu comes with? First, let's take a look at working with a file that Nu doesn't understand. ``` > open people.psv Octavia | Butler | Writer Bob | Ross | Painter Antonio | Vivaldi | Composer ``` To work with this in Nu, we need to do two steps: figure out where the rows are, and then figure out what the columns are. The rows are pretty easy, we just have one record per row: ``` > open people.psv | lines ---+------------------------------ # | value ---+------------------------------ 0 | Octavia | Butler | Writer 1 | Bob | Ross | Painter 2 | Antonio | Vivaldi | Composer ---+------------------------------ ``` Next, we can create our columns by splitting each row at the pipe (`|`) symbol: ``` > open people.psv | lines | split-column "|" ---+----------+-----------+----------- # | Column1 | Column2 | Column3 ---+----------+-----------+----------- 0 | Octavia | Butler | Writer 1 | Bob | Ross | Painter 2 | Antonio | Vivaldi | Composer ---+----------+-----------+----------- ``` That's already good enough that we can work with the data. We can go a step further and name the columns if we want: ``` > open people.psv | lines | split-column " | " firstname lastname job ---+-----------+----------+---------- # | firstname | lastname | job ---+-----------+----------+---------- 0 | Octavia | Butler | Writer 1 | Bob | Ross | Painter 2 | Antonio | Vivaldi | Composer ---+-----------+----------+---------- ``` But what about working with commands outside of Nu? Let's first call the native version of `ls` instead of the Nu version: ``` > ^ls

Nushell handles structured text files (JSON, TOML, YAML) as tables, allowing consistent data manipulation. To process unstructured data like a pipe-separated file, users can split the data into rows and columns using the `lines` and `split-column` commands. Additionally, Nushell can integrate with external commands like the native `ls` command.