Chell

A lightweight Unix-like shell implementation in C, designed for both Windows and Unix environments.

Current Features

• Basic command execution
• Cross-platform support (Windows and Unix-based systems)
• Windows ls command (automatically translates to dir)
• Custom line reading and parsing implementation
• Simple error handling
• Built-in commands (cd, help, exit)
• Command history
• Support for pipelines (|)
• Input/output redirection (<, >, >>)
• Background process execution (&)
• Signal handling (Ctrl+C)

Planned Features

• Tab completion
• Environment variable support

Building

To compile Chell, run the following command in a terminal:

Unix/macOS

make

Windows (MSYS2/UCRT64)

make

This will generate an executable named chell on Unix/macOS or chell.exe on Windows.

Usage

After building, you can start the shell by running:

./chell      # On Unix/macOS
./chell.exe  # On Windows

You should see the prompt:

chell> 

You can now enter commands as you would in a typical shell.

Current Commands

• Any system command available in your PATH
• Special handling for ls on Windows (converts to dir)
• exit - Exit the shell
• cd [directory] - Change the current directory
• help - Display help information
• history - Show command history
• Piping (Using |)
• i/o redirection
• Background processing (using &)
• Signal Handling (Ctrl + C)

Project Structure

• chell.c - Main shell implementation with command parsing and execution
• chell_extensions.c - Additional features and built-in commands
• makefile - Build configuration

Troubleshooting

• If you get "Permission denied" when compiling on Windows, ensure chell.exe is not currently running
• Use rm -f chell.exe before running make if you encounter compilation issues

License

MIT License

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to submit pull requests or open issues for new features, bug fixes, or improvements.