Simple Shell (gsh)

A minimal command-line shell written in C, inspired by Stephen Brennan’s Write a Shell in C tutorial. This project serves as both a learning tool and a foundation for building more advanced shell features.

Features Implemented

• Built-in commands:
  • cd – change directories (supports cd, cd ..)
  • help – display information about built-in commands
  • exit – exit the shell
• Executes external programs using fork and execvp
• Displays a prompt showing the current working directory
• Input is parsed into tokens using strtok
• Makefile included for easy compilation
• Command history with arrow key navigation

Planned Features

• Line editing (backspace, cursor movement)
• Command chaining with &&, ||, and ;
• Input and output redirection (<, >, >>)
• Piping support (|)
• Background job execution with &
• Prompt formatting with support for ~, username, and hostname
• Environment variable expansion (e.g., $HOME, $PATH)

Build Instructions

To compile the shell:

make

Run gsh

To run the shell

./gsh