nushell: `path relative-to` does not like piping to its input

Describe the bug feature request

Important EDIT: from the help page of path relative-to, it says The argument path needs to be a parent of the input path., but this issue of mine is more a feature request to relax this and compute the relative path to go from one to the other, regardless of parentness 😋

i’m not sure what to say more than the title really 😆

How to reproduce

pipe pwd to path relative-to

> pwd | path relative-to $nu.home-path
documents/repos/github.com/amtoine/nushell

give pwd as the argument

> $nu.home-path | path relative-to (pwd)
Error: nu::shell::cant_convert

  × Can't convert to prefix not found.
   ╭─[source:1:1]
 1 │ nu
   · ▲
   · ╰── can't convert string to prefix not found
   ╰────

Expected behavior

i expected both the commands to give the same result and no error 👍

Screenshots

No response

Configuration

key	value
version	0.84.1
branch	fix-expand-table-unnessary-color-in-trail-head-config
commit_hash	9744418a2144a0bad7b8506f58a58cd5a40b8fdf
build_os	linux-x86_64
build_target	x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
rust_version	rustc 1.70.0 (90c541806 2023-05-31)
rust_channel	1.70.0-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
cargo_version	cargo 1.70.0 (ec8a8a0ca 2023-04-25)
build_time	2023-09-14 18:55:46 +02:00
build_rust_channel	debug
allocator	standard
features	default, sqlite, trash, which, zip
installed_plugins	gstat, nu_plugin_explore

Additional context

i also get other errors depending on the thing piped to path relative

> $env.HOME | path relative-to (pwd)
Error: nu::shell::cant_convert

  × Can't convert to prefix not found.
    ╭─[Host Environment Variables:55:1]
 55 │ "HISTFILE"="/home/amtoine/.local/state/bash/history"
 56 │ "HOME"="/home/amtoine"
    ·        ───────┬───────
    ·               ╰── can't convert string to prefix not found
 57 │ "IPFS_PATH"="/home/amtoine/.ipfs"
    ╰────

> "." | path relative-to (pwd)
Error: nu::shell::cant_convert

  × Can't convert to prefix not found.
   ╭─[entry #13:1:1]
 1 │ "." | path relative-to (pwd)
   · ─┬─
   ·  ╰── can't convert string to prefix not found
   ╰────

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 10 months ago
Reactions: 1
Comments: 17 (12 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

okey, i see.

then, from the help page of the command

Express a path as relative to another path.

Can be used only when the input and the argument paths are either both absolute or both relative. The argument path needs to be a parent of the input path.

i think this is more of a feature request: i would vote for relaxing The argument path needs to be a parent of the input path. and just compute the absolute path from the input to the argument 😋

amtoine on Sep 15, 2023

One way of making it work bidirectionally is just do:

try lhs -> rhs, if it works, 
  return working value
if it fails, try rhs -> lhs, if it works
  return working value
else return an error

fdncred on Sep 16, 2023

ok, but how is it supposed to know when one is the prefix to strip?

fdncred on Sep 15, 2023