Command mode supports positional arguments

[klesh]

Command mode supports positional arguments

[joelim-work]

To provide some context, lf (a file manager) has a command line where text can be sent to a shell for execution. The following lines of code show how the shell arguments are built: https://github.com/gokcehan/lf/blob/0c02239b177a14526b84df41a07405c685cedaba/os.go#L142-L146

The resulting invocation looks roughly like this:

<shell> -c <script_contents> -- [args]...

This works nicely for POSIX-compliant shells, but not for nushell. I am not sure about the motivation however, since I think this doesn't fall under 'normal usage' requirements.

[NotTheDr01ds]

Ran into some similar problems with fzf passing a preview command-line to nu. In that case, it was differences in quoting between POSIX/Fish vs. Nushell.

I think there's a case to be made for providing some commonality with other shells in the way Nushell is invoked at least.

[fdncred]

The last time we talked about this I thought that def --wrapped custom commands would suffice. I could be remembering wrong though. For what it's worth, I'd probably support something like nu -c 'echo $argv' -- foo bar because it's pretty widely used, although others may not.

Also, saying posix shells do x is not a real motivating factor for nushell to do anything since we have never planned on being posix compliant. However, we do want nushell to feel comfortable and "at home" to a certain degree, but that definitely doesn't mean implementing everything a posix shell does. Sometimes keeping muscle memory is good. Other times we should just learn something new.

This is how def --wrapped works. It allows you to pass most anything through

❯ def --wrapped test [...args] { print ...$args }
❯ test -- a b c
--
a
b
c

[klesh]

@fdncred Sure, I didn't mean that nushell should obey the posix standard, I believe it is too old and should have been renewed a long time ago.
My feeling is more like: look, even good old Posix shell has it covered 😄, and nushell doesn't seem to be supporting such a use case at all.

I may not understand the def --wrapped correctly, but it doesn't seem to be working:

So, I think we all agree that it is a good thing to have, I will be working on the feature maybe next week, it could take a while since I am new to the project and Rust 😄

[fdncred]

Ok, as long as it doesn't interfere with params being passed to scripts. I'm pretty sure this is allowed now like nu script.nu param1 param2 where param1 and param2 are passed into script.nu as parameters. I could be remembering wrong though. Seems like it wouldn't interfere, but we just don't want to break existing functionality.

[klesh]

@fdncred Would you like to take a look at the issue and share your thoughts? I would like to work on it if we are on the same page.

[fdncred]

You're trying to pass -- foo bar to nu, not the tmp custom command which is fine, but my example was for custom commands supporting those flags, not the nushell executable. The nushell executable does not support it and it would have to be added via rust code.

[klesh]

@fdncred Yes, you are correct. I just wanted to make sure we are on the same page. I would try to add the support to the double dash -- for the nu executable, and the temp custom command example you showed is a good pointer for the implementation.