Hosh

Features

Human Oriented SHell, is an experimental shell, featuring:

• portability¹
  • written in Java 25, distributed as Uber-JAR and soon Jlink
  • works out-of-the-box in Windows, MacOS, Linux
  • limited HTTP 1.1/2.0 client (http) and ifconfig clone (network) as built-in commands
• usability as first class citizen²
  • interactive output displayed as table by default
  • sorting with natural sort
  • ANSI colors by default
  • errors (i.e. stderr) always colored in red
  • file sizes reported by default as KB, MB, GB, ...
  • better history by default
    • record timestamps for each command (see history command)
    • ignoring duplicated by default (like HISTCONTROL=ignoredups in bash)
    • append to history is incremental and shared between all sessions
    • no limits
• robust scripts by default
  • as if running bash scripts with set -euo pipefail (unofficial-strict-mode)
  • strongly typed (but not statically typed)
    • every value has a type not everything is a string
    • avoiding the need to dump/parse fields
    • basic types are: text, number, path, duration and instant
• pipelines built around schema-less records:
  • built-in commands produce records with well-defined keys
  • use | schema to inspect available keys
  • interoperability with external commands is achieved by using single-key record (with key text)
• wrapping commands, with before/after behavior:
  • withTime { lines very-big-file.txt | count } like time command in bash
  • withLock file.lock { command } run command as critical section guarded by file.lock
  • benchmark 10 { command } run command 10 times and then report best/worst/average execution time
• built with modern tooling and concepts
  • designed to be compatible with Java Platform Module System (i.e. Jigsaw)
  • designed to be compatible with Project Loom as commands run in isolated thread and communicate only via immutable messages
  • Fitness Functions from Evolutionary Architecture ISBN-13: 978-1491986363)

¹ it is not intended to conform to IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.2 Shell and Tools standard

² much more design and work is needed in this area

Getting started

Requirements: JDK25

$ ./mvwn clean verify
$ java -jar main/target/hosh.jar
hosh> echo "hello world!"
hello world!
hosh>

Examples

Sorting

Sorting is always performed using a well-defined key:

hosh> ls
# unsorted, following local file-system order
...
hosh> ls | schema
path size
hosh> ls | sort size
# files sorted by size
...
hosh> ls | sort path
# files sorted by alphanum algorithm
...

Find top-n files by size

Walk is able to recursively walk a directory and its subdirectories, providing file name and size:

hosh> walk . | schema
path size
...

By sorting the output of walk it is trivial to detect the biggest files:

hosh> walk . | sort size desc | take 5
aaa 2,5MB
bbb 1MB
ccc 1MB
ddd 1MB
eee 1MB

HTTP

Stream line by line a TSV file via HTTPS, take first 10 lines, split each line by tab yielding a 1-indexed record and finally show a subset of keys.

Bash + wget + awk:

bash$ wget -q -O - -- https://hosh-shell.github.io/sample.tsv | head -n 10 | awk -v OFS='\t' '{print $3, $1, $2}'

Hosh (no external commands):

hosh> http https://hosh-shell.github.io/sample.tsv | take 10 | split text '\\t' | select 3 1 2

Glob expansion and lambda blocks

To recursively remove all .class files in target:

hosh> walk target/ | glob '*.class' | { path -> rm ${path}; echo removed ${path} }

{ path -> ... } is lambda syntax, inside this scope is possible to use ${path}.

Parsing

It is possible to create records by using regex built-in with capturing groups:

hosh> git config -l | schema
text
...
hosh> git config -l | regex text '(?<key>.+)=(?<value>.+)' | take 2
key                value
credential.helper  osxkeychain
user.name          Davide Angelocola
hosh> hosh> git config -l | regex text '(?<key>.+)=(?<value>.+)' | take 2 | schema
key value
key value

Inspired by

• Collection Pipeline
• Bash Pitfalls
• PowerShell
• Erlang
• KScript (Kotlin library)
• Ammonite (Scala)
• Script (Go library)

And some nice UI features from:

• Nushell (Rust)
• Elvish (Go)
• Fish (C++)

License

MIT License

Development

Requirements

JDK 25.

Build

Full build with all fitness and acceptance tests: $ ./mvnw clean verify

Quick build (2x faster on my machine): $ ./mvnw -Pskip-slow-tests clean verify

Run

$ java -jar main/target/hosh.jar

Debug

$ java -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=y,address=1044 -jar main/target/hosh.jar

Logging

Hosh uses java.util.logging (to not require additional dependencies). HOSH_LOG_LEVEL controls logging behaviour according to Level. By default, logging is disabled, to enable it:

$ HOSH_LOG_LEVEL=FINE java -jar main/target/hosh.jar

Logging events will be persisted in $HOME/.hosh.log.

Docker support

Build a release with docker:

• $ cat ~/.github/secret_token | docker login https://ghcr.io -u $USERNAME --password-stdin
• $ ./mvnw clean verify # uberjar ready at main/target/
• $ docker build -t ghcr.io/hosh-shell/hosh:$VERSION .
• $ docker push ghcr.io/hosh-shell/hosh:$VERSION

Sonar

./mvnw clean verify sonar:sonar -Psonar -Dsonar.token=MYTOKEN

Mutation testing

./mvnw test-compile org.pitest:pitest-maven:mutationCoverage

Sponsors