🐚 Minishell - As Beautiful as a Shell

A 42 School project to create a simplified UNIX command-line interpreter
Inspired by bash, written in C with ❤️

🌟 Features

Mandatory

• Interactive prompt with working command history (using GNU readline)
• Command execution via PATH or absolute/relative paths
• Advanced parsing with single quotes ', double quotes ", and environment variables ($VAR)
• Redirections:
  • Input < and output > redirection
  • Heredoc << delimiter support
  • Append mode >>
• Pipes (|) for multi-command chaining
• Signal handling for Ctrl-C, Ctrl-D, and Ctrl-\ (bash-like behavior)
• Builtins:
  • echo with -n option
  • cd, pwd, exit
  • export, unset, env for environment management

Bonus (Optional)

• Logical operators && and || with parentheses
• Wildcard expansion * for current directory
• Enhanced error handling and edge case management

🛠️ Installation

1. Clone repository:

   git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/minishell.git
   cd minishell
   

Compile with Makefile:

make

Run:

./minishell

Requires GNU readline library (install via package manager if needed)

🚀 Usage

$> ./minishell
minishell> ls -l | grep .c | wc -l
      42
minishell> echo "Hello $USER" > greeting.txt
minishell> cat << EOF > output.txt
heredoc> Multiline
heredoc> input
heredoc> EOF

📚 Implementation Details

Language: C (C99 standard)

Memory: Zero-leaks policy with careful allocation/free management

Architecture: Modular design with separate parsing/execution logic

Compliance: Follows 42 School Norm (strict code style guidelines)

Dependencies: Uses readline for line editing and history features

🧠 Challenges Overcome

Precise handling of quoting and expansion rules

File descriptor management for complex redirections

Process synchronization in pipes

Signal handling in interactive/non-interactive modes

Environment variable management

⚠️ Limitations

Not a full POSIX-compliant shell

Limited built-in commands compared to bash

No tilde expansion or advanced globbing

🤝 Contributing

Pull requests welcome! Please follow:

42 School Norm guidelines

Test thoroughly

Document changes

📜 License

MIT License - See LICENSE for details

"The best way to predict the future is to implement it." - Inspired by Alan Kay