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sean p. may
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Linux shell terminal with commands

Linux Shell (C)

Oct 2024

CConcurrencyData Structures

a custom shell written in C with command execution, piping, redirection, and signal handling. the focus is on process control and getting correctness right under typical shell behaviors.

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

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
  4. 4track history for built-ins like prev

what's next

  • add job control (fg/bg) if i feel like it
  • harden parsing for edge cases and quoting rules