Minishell

Minishell is a project from 42 school that involves creating a basic Unix shell. The goal is to develop a functional shell that can interpret and execute commands, manage processes, and handle system calls.

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Project Architecture
3. Technologies Used
4. Features
5. Installation
6. Usage
7. Author

Overview

The Minishell project is a simplified implementation of a Unix shell that supports basic commands, input/output redirections, and pipes. This project is designed to provide experience with process management, signals, and how shells interpret and execute commands.

Project Architecture

• Command Parsing : Parses user input to handle commands, options, and arguments.
• Process Management : Uses fork(), execve(), and wait() system calls to create and manage child processes.
• Signal Handling : Catches and manages signals (e.g., Ctrl+C) to control shell behavior.

Technologies Used

• C Language : Core language for shell implementation
• Unix System Calls : For process management, input/output, and signal handling

Features

1. Basic Command Execution : Execute basic system commands found in Unix.
2. Input and Output Redirection : Supports <, >, and >> for redirection of input and output.
3. Piping : Ability to use pipes (|) to chain multiple commands together.
4. Environment Variables : Access and modify environment variables within the shell.
5. Signal Handling : Manages signals for interruption and suspension (e.g., Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Z).

Installation

To set up minishell, clone the repository and compile the program.

git clone https://github.com/garcia2/42_minishell
cd 42_minishell
make

This will create an executable named minishell.

Usage

To run the shell, execute the following command:

./minishell

Once running, you can enter commands as you would in a standard Unix shell. Some examples:

• Run simple commands: ls, echo "Hello"
• Use redirections: echo "Hello" > output.txt
• Chain commands with pipes: cat file.txt | grep "text"

Author

Project developed by Nicolas Garcia as part of 42 school.