🐚 Minishell 🐚

A minimal Bash shell clone developed as part of the 42 School curriculum.
This project challenges you to dive deep into shell programming, system calls, and teamwork while delivering a functional and interactive command-line interface.

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🌟 About the Project

Minishell is a core project at 42 School where students create a simplified version of Bash. It emphasizes understanding key components of shell functionality, such as:

• Parsing commands and handling syntax.
• Managing system processes with fork, exec, and wait.
• Handling pipes, redirections, and environment variables.
• Implementing built-in commands like echo, cd, pwd, env, export, unset, and exit.

This project not only develops low-level programming skills but also instills problem-solving and collaboration practices.

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🚀 Features

✅ Core Shell Capabilities

• Prompt Display: Shows the shell prompt, waiting for user input.
• Command Execution: Handles executables from $PATH and local directories.
• Built-in Commands: Implements core shell commands:
  • echo (with -n option).
  • cd (relative/absolute paths).
  • pwd, env, export, unset, and exit.
• Environment Variables: Expands variables like $HOME or $USER.

🔗 Advanced Functionalities

• Pipes (|): Redirect output from one command to the input of another.
• Redirections: Supports operators like >, >>, <, and <<.
• Command History: Navigate previous commands with arrow keys.

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⚙️ Commands & Options

make

Compiles different program pieces and builds a final executable

make [RULE]

Rule	Description
all	Default rule, compiles the mandatory part
clean	Removes all the objects file of the project
fclean	Removes some of the temporary files of the project (.o and .a)
fclean	Removes all the temporary files of the project (.o, .a and executables)

🛠️ How to Use

1️⃣ Installation

Clone the repository and compile the project:

git clone https://github.com/dhsudev/minishell.git
cd minishell
make

2️⃣ Running the Shell

Launch Minishell:

./minishell

3️⃣ Exiting

To exit the shell, type:

exit

🔍 Technical Insights

Key Concepts

• Lexical Analysis & Parsing: Breaking down user input into tokens and parsing commands to interpret their structure.
• Process Management: Leveraging fork, execve, and waitpid for running commands and handling child processes.
• Signal Handling: Responding gracefully to signals like Ctrl+C (interrupt).
• Memory Management: Avoiding memory leaks and ensuring efficient usage.

Challenges

Handling edge cases in redirections, piping, and variable expansions. Ensuring compliance with POSIX standards while maintaining simplicity.