AfafTarchoun / Minishell

Minishell 🐚 - A Simple Shell Implementation

As beautiful as a shell

This project is about creating a simple shell. Yes, your own little bash

Minishell is a simple shell implementation written in C, allowing users to interact with their operating system using command-line commands. It supports various features like executing executables, managing environment variables, implementing redirections, pipes, and handling signals. This project is part of the 42 School curriculum.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Installation
3. Usage
4. Features
5. Built-in Commands
6. Contributing

Introduction

Minishell aims to provide a basic shell experience for users, allowing them to execute commands, navigate the file system, and manage environment variables. It is designed to be user-friendly and provide the essential functionalities of a shell.

Installation

To compile Minishell, make sure you have the gcc compiler and the GNU Make utility installed on your system. Then, follow these steps:

1. Clone this repository to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/AfafTarchoun/Minishell.git
cd minishell

2. Run the provided Makefile to build the executable:

make

The minishell executable should now be generated in the project directory.

Usage

Run the minishell executable to start the shell:

./Minishell

You will see the Minishell prompt, where you can type in your commands.

To exit Minishell, use the exit command:

minishell$ exit

Features

Minishell provides the following features:

• Displaying a prompt to interact with the user.
• Maintaining a command history for easy navigation.
• Searching and executing the right executable using the PATH variable or absolute/relative paths.
• Handling single and double quotes to prevent interpretation of metacharacters.
• Implementing redirections for input (<) and output (>), as well as append mode (>>).
• Supporting pipes (|) to chain commands together.
• Expanding environment variables ($VAR) to their values.
• Expanding $? to the exit status of the most recently executed foreground pipeline.
• Handling signals ctrl-C, ctrl-D, and ctrl-\ as expected in a shell.
• Implementing various built-in commands (see Built-in Commands).

Built-in Commands

Minishell supports the following built-in commands:

• echo : Display arguments to the standard output, with the option -n to omit the trailing newline.
• cd : Change the current directory using a relative or absolute path.
• pwd : Display the absolute pathname of the current working directory.
• export : Set an environment variable with the format key=value.
• unset : Unset/delete an environment variable.
• env : Display the current environment variables.
• exit : Exit the shell.

Contributing

Contributions to Minishell are welcome! If you find any issues or have improvements to suggest, please feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.