Minishell

Project Description ✨

Minishell is a minimalist Unix shell implementation created as part of the 42 school curriculum. This project teaches the fundamentals of process creation, file descriptors, and shell programming by recreating a functional shell with many of Bash's core features.

Key features include:

• Command execution with PATH resolution
• Environment variable expansion
• Redirections (>, >>, <, <<)
• Pipes (|)
• Signal handling (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-D, Ctrl-)
• Built-in commands (echo, cd, pwd, export, unset, env, exit)
• Single and double quote handling

Installation 🛠️

Prerequisites

• C Compiler (cc/gcc/clang)
• GNU Make
• readline library (install with brew install readline on macOS or sudo apt-get install libreadline-dev on Ubuntu)

Compilation

git clone https://github.com/mtelek/minishell.git
cd minishell
make

This will create an executable named minishell.

Usage 🚀

Run the shell with:

./minishell

You'll see a prompt where you can enter commands just like in Bash.

To exit, either:

• Type exit
• Or press Ctrl-D

Testing 🧪

Here's how Minishell compares to Bash in various scenarios:

Command Comparison Table

Test Case	Bash Output	Minishell Output	Status
echo "Hello $USER"	Hello username	Hello username	✅
ls > file.txt	Creates file	Creates file	✅
cat < file.txt	File contents	File contents	✅
echo -n "No newline"	No newline	No newline	✅
export TEST=value	Sets variable	Sets variable	✅
echo $TEST	value	value	✅
unset TEST	Removes variable	Removes variable	✅
exit 42	Exits with 42	Exits with 42	✅