minishell

Minishell - As beautiful as a shell

Description

This project is about creating a fully functional shell from scratch, which should behave like bash, just with less features. This was a group project consisting of @mottjes and @me.

Features

• Executable Search: Minishell can execute the appropriate executable with a relative and a absolute path

• Signal Handling: Only one global variable is used to indicate received signals. This maintains the integrity of our main data structures.

• Ctrl-C, Ctrl-D, Ctrl-\ Handling: The shell behaves like bash with respect to these keyboard shortcuts:

  • Ctrl-C: Displays a new prompt on a new line.
  • Ctrl-D: Exits the shell.
  • Ctrl-: No action taken.

• Command History

• Quoting: Minishell handles single quotes ('), preventing the interpretation of metacharacters within the quoted sequence. Double quotes (") do the same, except for the dollar sign ($).

• Redirections: The shell supports various redirections:

  • < redirects input.
  • > redirects output.
  • << reads input until a specified delimiter, without updating history.
  • >> redirects output in append mode.

• Pipes: Our shell implements pipes (|), to get output from one command to the input of the next.

• Environment Variables: Minishell handles environment variables ($ followed by characters), expanding them to their corresponding values.

• Exit Status: $? expands to the exit status of the most recently executed foreground pipeline.

• Built-in Commands: Minishell supports the following built-in commands:

  • echo with the -n option
  • cd with relative or absolute paths
  • pwd with no options
  • export with no options
  • unset with no options
  • env with no options or arguments
  • exit with no options

For more detail: The subject pdf is inside of the project folder.

Installation

Follow these steps to set up and run Minishell on your system:

1. Clone the Repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourname/minishell.git

2. Navigate to the Directory:

   cd minishell

3. Compile the Code: Ensure you have make and gcc installed on your system.

   make

4. Launch the Executable:

   ./minishell