🐚 minishell

A simplified UNIX shell built in C with support for pipes, redirections, and environment variables.

📌 Description

minishell is a 42 School project that replicates core behavior of a real UNIX shell. It supports executing built-in and external commands, handling pipes, redirections, and managing environment variables — all within a controlled and memory-safe environment.

This project offers a deep dive into process control, terminal interaction, and string parsing in C, providing valuable experience in building a real-world system tool from scratch.

🔧 Features

• Command execution (ls, echo, etc.)
• Built-in commands: cd, pwd, exit, env, export, unset
• Environment variable expansion (e.g. $HOME)
• Pipes (|) and multiple chained commands
• Redirections: >, >>, <, << (heredoc)
• Quote handling (single and double)
• Exit codes and error messages
• Signal handling (ctrl + C, ctrl + D, ctrl + \)
• No usage of system() or other shell functions

🚀 Getting Started

🧱 Compilation

make

▶️ Run the shell

./minishell

💡 Example

minishell$ echo Hello | cat -e
Hello$

📘 Concepts Learned

• Process creation and control using fork, execve, wait
• File descriptor duplication with dup, dup2
• Pipe management and redirection logic
• Environment variable manipulation
• Custom string parsing/tokenizing
• Signal handling (SIGINT, SIGQUIT)
• Error messaging and return codes
• Writing and debugging a command interpreter