require strings to obviously be strings. maybe.

[colemickens]

Related problem

I am getting tripped up multiple times a day by one single thing -- unquoted strings being treated as strings.

I really wish that nushell didn't coerce anything it doesn't recognize to a string.

let success = true
...
if success {

}

gives a string error. Passing gcrootsdir to a external-command just silently, when I'd really meant $gcrootsdir, which meant I'd silently been writing to the completely wrong directory.

Describe the solution you'd like

1. Nushell does not coerce unquoted strings to strings.

Granted, as I type that, I'm not really sure how that would be handled, given that random flags and arguments to external commands are indeed generally unquoted strings.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context and details

No response

[fdncred]

success here is not a string

> let success = true
> $success | describe
bool

When you declare variables you need to reference them with $variable_name like most scripting languages. Maybe I'm not understanding?

[colemickens]

Right, but if success { ... } gives a "cannot convert string to bool" error. Which I've stared at a few times and gone... "no, it's not".

Maybe it would just be enough to have hints on errors. Like:

"Cannot convert string to bool (did you mean $success instead of success"

Given the external commands and "you're just doing it wrong", maybe there's no bug/feature here. But I've had this thought a few times and wanted to bring it up at least.

[fdncred]

someone may be able to hook up a 'did you mean' to this. i'm not sure how to do that myself.