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Minishell (A Simple Shell Implementation in C)
Minishell was my deep dive into the world of shell programming and process management in Unix-like systems. This project challenged me to create a basic shell, similar to bash, implementing various features from scratch.
Project Overview
The goal was to develop a functional shell that can:
- Display a prompt for user input
- Handle command history
- Execute commands (using PATH, relative, or absolute paths)
- Manage quotes and environment variables
- Implement redirections and pipes
- Handle signals (ctrl-C, ctrl-D, ctrl-)
- Include built-in commands like echo, cd, pwd, export, unset, env, and exit
Learning Outcomes
This project was a fantastic opportunity to understand the intricacies of process creation, file descriptors, and command interpretation. While my implementation might not be as optimized as professional shells, it provided invaluable insights into:
- Process management using fork(), execve(), and wait()
- File descriptor manipulation for redirections and pipes
- Signal handling in a multi-process environment
- Parsing and interpreting command-line arguments
- Managing environment variables
Minishell has significantly deepened my understanding of how shells and command-line interfaces work under the hood. The skills I’ve gained here are directly applicable to more complex system programming projects and have given me a newfound appreciation for the tools we use daily in software development.