minishell

A minimal Unix shell implementation in C, developed as part of the 42 school curriculum. minishell aims to replicate the basic behavior of bash, supporting command execution, pipelines, redirections, environment variables, and several built-in commands.

Features

• Prompt: Displays a customizable prompt and reads user input.
• Command Execution: Runs binaries from the system's $PATH and supports argument passing.
• Built-in Commands: Implements the following built-ins:
  • echo
  • cd
  • pwd
  • export
  • unset
  • env
  • exit
• Pipelines: Supports chaining commands with |.
• Redirections: Handles input <, output >, append >>, and heredoc <<.
• Environment Variables: Expands variables (e.g., $HOME) and manages the shell environment.
• Quotes: Handles single ' and double " quotes for grouping and variable expansion.
• Signal Handling: Manages Ctrl+C, Ctrl+D, and Ctrl+\ gracefully.
• Error Handling: Provides informative error messages for invalid commands, syntax errors, and failed operations.
• Memory Management: Cleans up all allocated resources to avoid leaks.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• GNU Make
• GCC or Clang
• readline and ncurses libraries

Build

make

This will compile the shell and its dependencies (including a custom libft).

Run

./minishell

You'll see a prompt where you can type commands as in a regular shell.

Docker (Optional)

A Dockerfile is provided for building and running minishell in a containerized environment:

docker build -t minishell .
docker run -it minishell

Usage

• Type commands and press Enter to execute.
• Use pipes (|) to chain commands.
• Redirect input/output using <, >, >>, and <<.
• Use built-in commands for shell management.
• Press Ctrl+D to exit the shell.

Examples

ls -l | grep minishell > result.txt
export MYVAR=42
echo $MYVAR
cat << EOF
Hello minishell!
EOF

Project Structure

• src/ — Core shell logic (parsing, execution, environment, signals, etc.)
• builtins/ — Implementations of built-in commands
• libft/ — Custom standard library functions
• get_next_line/ — Line reading utility
• incl/ — Header files

Authors

• Valeria Harkusha
• Yen Nguyen

Notes

• This project is a learning exercise and may not cover all edge cases or advanced shell features.
• Memory management is a work in progress; some leaks may remain.

License

This project is for educational purposes and is not intended for production use.