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Linux shell terminal with commands

Linux Shell (C)

Oct 2024

CConcurrencyData Structures

A custom shell written in C with support for command execution, piping, redirection, and signals. The project focuses on process control and correctness under typical shell behaviors.

Recursive pipe chaining supports arbitrary-depth pipelines via right-to-left parsing and fork/dup2 orchestration

5 built-ins (cd, source, prev, help, verbose) communicate with parent via a dedicated global IPC pipe

Single-pass tokenizer handles quoted strings, special characters, and whitespace with a custom 2x-growth dynamic vector

What I built

  • Command execution with piping and I/O redirection
  • Signal handling and process orchestration
  • Built-in commands (source, prev, cd, help, verbose toggle)

How it works

  1. 1Parse input into commands and pipeline segments
  2. 2Fork/exec child processes and wire pipes between them
  3. 3Apply redirections and handle signals appropriately
  4. 4Track history for built-ins like prev

Next steps

  • Add job control (fg/bg) if desired
  • Harden parsing for edge cases and quoting rules