shishell

A simple Unix-style shell written in Rust, built as a learning project.

It runs a basic read-eval-print loop: it prints a prompt, reads a line, and executes the command(s) you type by spawning child processes.

Features

• Run external programs with arguments (e.g. ls -la)
• Pipe commands together with | (e.g. ls | grep src | wc -l)
• Built-in cd to change the working directory (defaults to /)
• Built-in exit to quit the shell

Requirements

• Rust (edition 2024)

Build & Run

cargo run

Or build a release binary:

cargo build --release
./target/release/shishell

Usage

Once running, you'll see a > prompt:

>ls
>cat Cargo.toml | grep name
>cd src
>exit

How it works

Each line is split on | into a pipeline of commands. For every command in the pipeline, the shell wires the previous command's stdout into the next command's stdin, and the final command writes to the terminal. The cd and exit commands are handled internally rather than spawned as processes.

Project layout

src/main.rs   # the entire shell: REPL, piping, and built-ins
Cargo.toml    # package manifest