Related problem

The watch command of the procps utility is quite useful in certain circumstances. I use it a lot to monitor certain command outputs, for example pueue status, package manager installation progress, etc. It would be wonderful if nushell output could be 'watched' in a similar manner, meaning that the standard output updates itself with the output of a command in a provided block.

Describe the solution you'd like

There is already a watch command, so I'll use a fictional command monitor

There should be a command that expects a block and that is able to monitor the output not only of external commands, but also internal ones:

monitor { sys | get mem }

There should be an option to always show colored output.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I've created the following custom command:

def monitor [command: block] {
  let config_path = $nu.config-path
  let env_path = $nu.env-path
  let source_code = (view-source $command | str trim -l -c '{' | str trim -r -c '}')
  ^watch --color -tn 1 $"nu --config ($config_path) --env-config ($env_path) -c '($source_code)'"
}

...however, this has a few limitations:

• Only works on Linux (Unix?) and needs procps to be installed on the system. Wouldn't work on Windows.
• Doesn't work with colored output like ls

Additional context and details

Also, I think the watch command of the procps utility comes with some useful options, feel free to check them out here.