Why attribute names in themer are written as strings?

[rafaeljacov]

        themer = with pkgs.vimPlugins;
          (builtins.getAttr (categories.colorscheme or "onedark") {
              # Theme switcher without creating a new category
              "onedark" = onedark-nvim;
              "catppuccin" = catppuccin-nvim;
              "catppuccin-mocha" = catppuccin-nvim;
              "tokyonight" = tokyonight-nvim;
              "tokyonight-day" = tokyonight-nvim;
            }
          );

[BirdeeHub]

Its an example, not something built into nixCats. Feel free to delete it from your config if you don't like it by the way.

It shows how you can use values from your packageDefintiions within your categoryDefinitions.

For example the categories set or the setting set are all things you have access to there.

In this case,

        themer = with pkgs.vimPlugins; # <- make a new category of stuff to install called themer
          (builtins.getAttr (categories.colorscheme or "onedark") { # <- we will grab categories.colorscheme from our packageDefinition
              "onedark" = onedark-nvim; # <- and we install the package corresponding with whatever was in categories.colorscheme, assuming any matched.
              "catppuccin" = catppuccin-nvim;
              "catppuccin-mocha" = catppuccin-nvim;
              "tokyonight" = tokyonight-nvim;
              "tokyonight-day" = tokyonight-nvim;
            }
          );

It is not installing the string but rather the package associated with that string via the table there.

---

Also I may have misunderstood, so, to cover my bases, if by "written as strings" you mean why does it not look like this

        themer = with pkgs.vimPlugins; # <- make a new category of stuff to install called themer
          (builtins.getAttr (categories.colorscheme or "onedark") { # <- we will grab categories.colorscheme from our packageDefinition
              onedark = onedark-nvim; # <- and we install the package corresponding with whatever was in categories.colorscheme, assuming any matched.
              catppuccin = catppuccin-nvim;
              catppuccin-mocha = catppuccin-nvim;
              tokyonight = tokyonight-nvim;
              tokyonight-day = tokyonight-nvim;
            }
          );

Then the answer is mostly just "because" tbh. Because they are being compared against a string using getAttr so it felt right.

[rafaeljacov]

so it wouldn't matter if the attr names were not quoted?

[BirdeeHub]

builtins.getAttr "somestring" {
  somestring = "hi";
}

Will give you the string hi back

so will

builtins.getAttr "somestring" {
  "somestring" = "hi";
}

You can use quotes in attrset names for characters that are otherwise not valid identifiers. Or just because it felt right

You can use them when accessing too

  mySet."some illegal key".value

You can also do

{
  ${somevar} = "something"
}

and

{
  "${somevar}-something" = "something"
}

The quotes are ALWAYS fine to have around attrset names.

There are some cases in overrideAttrs where using variables in the attrset names can get you into trouble with infinite recursion, but this is quite rare for the majority of nix users to encounter, so in practice using variables in the names should also be considered fine as long as it is allowed, which is basically always