Shell (C)

A small educational Unix-like command shell implemented in C. The project demonstrates command parsing, builtins, and I/O redirection (including support for >, >>, 1>, 1>>, and 2>).

Features

• Simple interactive prompt
• Builtin commands: pwd, cd, exit, type, echo
• Execute external programs found via PATH
• Output redirection: overwrite (> / 1> / 2>) and append (>> / 1>> / 2>>)
• Basic handling of quoted arguments and escapes

Repository layout

• src/ — all C source files and headers (the shell implementation)

Key files in src/:

• main.c — main loop and command dispatch
• exec.c — external command execution and redirection handling
• redir.c — builtin echo and redirection helper logic
• utils.c, utils.h — helper utilities and parsing helpers

Build

Preffered: compile with cc/gcc directly

cc -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=200809L -std=c23 src/*.c -o shell_c
./codecrafters_shell

Usage examples

• Run builtins:

$ pwd
/home/user/project
$ cd src
$ exit

• Execute external commands and redirect output:

$ ls -l > out.txt       # overwrite out.txt
$ echo hello >> out.txt # append to out.txt
$ /bin/echo hi 1>> out.txt
$ somecmd 2> errors.txt # redirect stderr

Notes & limitations

• This is an educational/demo shell and does not implement full POSIX shell features (no job control, pipelines, complex expansions, or robust signal handling).
• Quoting and escaping aim to be helpful but are not a complete shell parser.

Contributing

Patches, bug reports, and improvements are welcome. Please open a GitHub issue or submit a PR.

License

MIT License — feel free to reuse and adapt.

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This README was generated to document a shell implementation in C located in the src/ directory.