Minishell is a simple shell program written in C. It provides a command-line interface that allows users to interact with their computer through a series of commands. This project aims to replicate the functionality of a basic shell, similar to Bash, and provides a set of features and functionalities that allow users to execute commands, handle processes, and perform various operations on files and directories.
- Prompt: Minishell displays a prompt when waiting for a new command, indicating that it is ready to accept user input.
- Command Execution: The shell searches for and launches the appropriate executable based on the PATH variable, or using a relative or absolute path.
- History: Minishell maintains a working history of previously executed commands, allowing users to navigate and recall previous commands.
- Quotes Handling: The shell interprets and handles single quotes ('), preventing the interpretation of metacharacters within the quoted sequence. Double quotes (") prevent interpretation of metacharacters, except for the dollar sign ($).
- Redirections: Minishell supports input (<) and output (>) redirection, allowing users to redirect the input or output of a command to/from a file. Append mode (>>) for output redirection is also supported. Here documents (<<) can be used to read input until a specified delimiter is encountered.
- Pipes: The shell supports pipes (|) to connect the output of one command as the input of another command in a pipeline.
- Environment Variables: Minishell handles environment variables ($ followed by a sequence of characters) and expands them to their corresponding values.
- Built-in Commands: The shell implements several built-in commands, including echo, cd, pwd, export, unset, env, and exit.
- Signal Handling: Minishell handles signals such as ctrl-C, ctrl-D, and ctrl-\ in an interactive mode, providing behavior similar to Bash.
To compile and run Minishell, follow these steps:
- Clone the repository:
git clone <repository-url> - Navigate to the project directory:
cd minishell - Compile the source code:
make - Run Minishell:
./minishell