42 Exam Practice Shell

⚡ An interactive practice environment for 42 School exams (Ranks 02-05) ⚡

📋 Overview

This project provides a practice shell for 42 School examinations, with interactive menus and exercises for each exam rank. It simulates the exam environment: you get a subject, write your answer in a scratch folder, and a tester compares your output against a reference solution.

🚀 Features

• Interactive menu system: colourful terminal interface
• Ranks 02 to 05: every rank has a Level Mode (work through a level at your own pace) and a Real Exam Mode (random subject, you cannot move on until it passes)
• Dedicated workspace: you write in rendu/, the shell backs it up when you leave
• Automated testers: your code is compiled and diffed against a reference
• Leak checking: the asan command runs your code under AddressSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer
• Reference answers: solution, plus solution alt for a second, independently written take on the same subject
• Turkish subjects: rank 03 and rank 04 subjects carry a [TURKISH SUBJECT] section under the original text

📁 Project Structure

.
├── exam.sh              # Entry point
├── Makefile             # Runs exam.sh
├── README.md            # This file
├── rendu/               # Your workspace (git-ignored, wiped between sessions)
├── trace/               # Backups taken when you leave a practice session
└── .resources/
    ├── main/            # Menus, practice loops, shared helpers
    │   ├── menu.sh          # Entry, sets tester permissions
    │   ├── level_base.sh    # Level Mode loop
    │   ├── rank0X_*.sh      # Per-rank menus and Real Exam Mode loops
    │   └── asan_lib.sh      # Shared AddressSanitizer helpers
    ├── rank02/          # level0 - level3
    ├── rank03/          # level1 - level2
    ├── rank04/          # level1 - level2
    └── rank05/          # level1 - level2

Each exercise folder holds sub.txt (the subject), a reference solution, tester.sh, sometimes a main.c harness, an optional asan.sh, and an optional alt/ folder with an alternative solution.

🔧 Installation & Usage

git clone https://github.com/hudayiarici/42_examshell
cd 42_examshell
make

Or directly: bash exam.sh

🧭 Menu Options

• 🔄 1. Commands: in-session command reference
• 🚀 2. Exam Rank 02
• 📋 3. Exam Rank 03
• 📄 4. Exam Rank 04
• 📄 5. Exam Rank 05
• 📁 6. Open Rendu Folder

Each rank menu then offers Level Mode or Real Exam Mode.

⌨️ Commands During Practice

Command	What it does	Level Mode	Real Exam Mode
test	Compile your code and diff it against the reference	✅	✅
asan	Run under AddressSanitizer + UBSanitizer to catch leaks and undefined behaviour	✅	✅
solution	Print the reference answer	✅	✅
solution alt	Print a second, independently written answer (where one exists)	✅	✅
next	Move on to the next subject	✅	✅
menu	Back up rendu/ and return to the main menu	✅	—
exit	Quit	backs up rendu/	quits straight away

asan and solution alt are currently wired up for rank 04. Elsewhere they report that nothing is available and leave you where you were.

📚 Exam Ranks Covered

Rank	Focus	Subjects
02	C fundamentals: strings, bits, lists, sorting	55 exercises across level0-level3
03	Algorithms and backtracking	broken_gnl, filter · n_queens, permutations, powerset, rip, tsp
04	Processes, pipes and parsing	ft_popen, picoshell · vbc
05	C++ and object-oriented design	bigint, polyset, vect2 · bsq, life

Rank 04 is narrowed to the subjects that actually come up in the exam. sandbox and argo are still on disk but out of rotation; add them back to the pools in .resources/main/level_base.sh and .resources/main/rank04_exam_mode.sh if you want them.

📝 Workspace and Backups

You write your answers under rendu/<subject>/. The folder is recreated on every run, so it is git-ignored and never holds anything permanently.

When you leave a session with exit or menu, rendu/ is copied to trace/rendu_backup_<timestamp>/ before being cleared. Finishing a full Real Exam Mode run for rank 04 or rank 05 instead backs up to exam/rendu_backup_<timestamp>/.

⚙️ Requirements

• Bash and a Unix-like system (Linux or macOS)
• gcc — testers build with -Wall -Wextra -Werror
• Terminal with colour support (recommended)

The asan command needs a gcc with AddressSanitizer, which is the default on Linux and macOS. It stands in for valgrind, which will not run on Arch-based systems without glibc debug symbols.

🙏 Credits

Forked from terminal-42s/42_examshell.

The alternative solutions under alt/ are copied from suatkvam/exam-4 and are not our own work. See .resources/rank04/ALT_SOLUTIONS.md.

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Good luck with your exams! 🍀