Simple Shell with Pipes (C)

Overview

This project implements a custom Unix-like command-line shell in C. It supports process creation, command execution, input parsing, and inter-process communication using pipes.

Features

• Command execution using fork() and execvp()
• Support for multiple command-line arguments
• Custom prompt support
• Process management with wait()
• Input parsing and tokenization
• Pipe support for chaining multiple commands
• Error handling and EOF handling

Functionality

• Execute standard Linux commands (e.g., ls, ps, cat)
• Handle multiple arguments per command
• Support piping (e.g., cat file.txt | wc -l)
• Display child process ID and exit status
• Graceful termination using exit command

Technologies

• C programming language
• Linux (Ubuntu)
• System calls: fork, execvp, wait, pipe, dup2
• Makefile build system

My Contributions

• Implemented command parsing and argument tokenization
• Developed process creation and execution using fork/exec
• Implemented pipe functionality using pipe() and dup2()
• Handled input validation, errors, and EOF conditions
• Designed custom shell prompt support

What I Learned

• Process creation and management in Unix systems
• Inter-process communication using pipes
• Command parsing and execution flow
• Low-level system programming in C
• Debugging multi-process programs

How to Run

make
make run