Mini Shell

Project 3: Mini Shell

What You'll Build

A minimal Unix shell that parses commands, handles built-ins (cd, exit), and executes external programs using fork/exec. A classic Stanford/CMU systems programming assignment.

Concepts Applied

• String tokenization and command parsing
• Multi-file project organization
• Makefile-based builds
• Process creation with fork() and exec()
• Pipeline support with pipes
• Signal handling (Ctrl+C)
• Debugging with GDB and sanitizers

Example

$ ./minish
minish> echo hello world
hello world
minish> ls -la | grep .c
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user  1234 Jan 15 10:00 main.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user  2345 Jan 15 10:00 parser.c
minish> cd /tmp
minish> pwd
/tmp
minish> exit

Content coming soon. This project will guide you through building a working shell, applying multi-file project organization, Makefiles, and systems programming concepts. It is the most integration-heavy project in the course.