Weird state of "newline-delimited JSON" support

[KFearsoff]

Bug report form

• I have done a basic search of the issue tracker to find any existing issues that are similar.
• I have checked that my version is at least the latest stable release available via my installation method.

Describe the bug

nushell currently supports at least 3 variations of newline-delimited JSON inputs. First, there is from json --objects. There's also jsonl and ndjson support in stdlib.

How to reproduce

See from json having an --objects flag:

from json --help
...
  Parse a stream of line-delimited JSON values.
  > '{ "a": 1 }
{ "b": 2 }' | from json --objects
  ╭───┬────┬────╮
  │ # │ a  │ b  │
  ├───┼────┼────┤
  │ 0 │  1 │ ❎ │
  │ 1 │ ❎ │  2 │
  ╰───┴────┴────╯

See stdlib functions for newline-delimited JSON support:

nu -c "
  use std
  scope commands
  | where name =~ '^std formats from '
  | select name description extra_description
  | wrap 'Standard Library Commands'
  | table -e
"
╭───┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ # │                                        Standard Library Commands                                        │
├───┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 0 │ ╭───────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮                 │
│   │ │ name              │ std formats from jsonl                                          │                 │
│   │ │ description       │ Convert from JSONL (https://jsonlines.org/) to structured data. │                 │
│   │ │ extra_description │                                                                 │                 │
│   │ ╰───────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯                 │
│ 1 │ ╭───────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │
│   │ │ name              │ std formats from ndjson                                                         │ │
│   │ │ description       │ Convert from NDJSON (https://github.com/ndjson/ndjson-spec) to structured data. │ │
│   │ │ extra_description │                                                                                 │ │
│   │ ╰───────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯ │
│ 2 │ ╭───────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮                 │
│   │ │ name              │ std formats from ndnuon                                         │                 │
│   │ │ description       │ Convert from NDNUON (newline-delimited NUON) to structured data │                 │
│   │ │ extra_description │                                                                 │                 │
│   │ ╰───────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯                 │
╰───┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Expected behavior

Given that all of those newline-delimited input formats are very similar, I'd expect a single interface to using them.

Configuration

key	value
version	0.113.1
major	0
minor	113
patch	1
branch
commit_hash
build_os	linux-x86_64
build_target	x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
rust_version	rustc 1.95.0 (59807616e 2026-04-14) (built from a source tarball)
cargo_version	cargo 1.95.0 (f2d3ce0bd 2026-03-21)
build_time	1980-01-01 00:00:00 +00:00
build_rust_channel	release
allocator	standard
features	default, mcp, network, plugin, rustls-tls, sqlite, trash-support
installed_plugins
experimental_options	example=false, reorder-cell-paths=true, pipefail=true, enforce-runtime-annotations=false, native-clip=false, cell-path-types=false

[fdncred]

I really don't understand your point. from json --objects is literally what from jsonl and from ndjson call. They're just helpers that can be easily used with use std/formats *.

[weirdan]

To expand on that, from jsonl and from ndjson are there just so they can automatically hook into open, which allows you to open filename.ndjson and open filename.jsonl. Internally, they both just call from json --objects