[__MatrixMan__]

One thing that struck me while learning nushell is that instead of:

    $ echo "hello world"
    hello world

I can do:

    $ "hello world"
    hello world

Is this an indication that it is expression oriented? (just checking that I've understood the phrase).

[ryandv]

This is the statement/expression distinction; `echo "hello world"` is a statement that, when evaluated, has the side effect of printing "hello world" to stdout (or wherever), and has no value (for the purposes of this example).

`"hello world"` is an expression with the literal string value "hello world"; your REPL probably prints out that expression's value once it is evaluated for convenience.

FWIW I'm not actually familiar with nushell and am speaking fairly generally about statements vs. expressions.

[acchow]

Yes.

Essentially, statements have no value (or return no value). Expressions have a value.