Alternatives to Murex
A command-line shell with native support for JSON, YAML, CSV and other structured data. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Murex
A command-line shell with native support for JSON, YAML, CSV and other structured data.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Murex.
Nushell
Shell that pipes structured tables instead of untyped text.
Nushell pipes structured tables instead of text and also runs on Windows, though its language still changes and breaks between releases.
Elvish
A scripting language and interactive shell with data structures and built-in interactive features.
Elvish offers lists, maps and functions with early error checks and ships as a single static binary for Linux, BSDs, macOS and Windows.
Xonsh
A cross-platform shell whose language is a superset of Python 3 with shell commands built in.
Xonsh uses a superset of Python 3 as its shell language, so structured data work relies on Python libraries rather than built-in format handling.
Oils
A Unix shell project combining OSH, a bash-compatible shell, and YSH, a new shell language.
Oils combines OSH, which runs existing bash scripts with stricter error checking, and YSH with JSON support, but is still before a 1.0 release.
fish
A shell that autosuggests commands from your history, highlights syntax as you type and has tab completions that work without configuration.
fish trades structured data handling for autosuggestions, syntax highlighting and man-page completions that work with no configuration.
Zsh
Interactive shell with powerful completion, globbing and prompt theming.
Zsh drops native structured data support but gives a larger community, powerful completion and recursive globbing, with scripts closer to POSIX shells.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Starship
A shell prompt that shows the git branch, language version and other context, configured once and working in every shell.
Oh My Posh
Customize shell prompts across operating systems with configurable themes.
McFly
Replaces the shell's Ctrl-R history search with context-aware suggestions.
