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A minimal shell written from scratch in C.
35+ built-in commands · colored output · persistent history · no external libraries
Mshell is a hand-made command-line shell built entirely from scratch in C, without relying on any external library. Every command — from ls to grep, sort and rm -r — was reimplemented using raw system calls (read, write, open, stat, readdir, fork…).
The project started as a way to understand how a real shell works under the hood, and grew into a full toolbox of 35+ commands with colored output, aligned columns, glob expansion and a persistent command history.
Personal learning project — separate from the 42 cursus Minishell.
| Launch | ls -l | help |
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
- 35+ built-in commands reimplemented from scratch
- Colored output — prompt, errors, directories, permissions
- Glob expansion —
cat *,cat *.c - Persistent history — stored in
~/.history, survives sessions - Aligned columns —
ls -landhelpoutput are properly padded - Recursive operations —
rm -rwalks the whole tree - Zero external dependencies — only libc and system calls
git clone git@github.com:Blackholeisoka/Mshell.git
cd Mshell
make
./mshellType help inside the shell to list every command, or help <command> for details.
| Category | Commands |
|---|---|
| Navigation | pwd · cd · ls (-l -la) · clear |
| Files | cat (glob) · touch · cp · mv · rm (-r) · ln (-s) · chmod |
| Directories | mkdir · rmdir |
| Text | echo (-n) · head (-n) · tail (-n) · wc (-l -c) · grep (-n -v) · sort (-r) · uniq (-d -u) · tac · rev · diff |
| Path | basename · dirname |
| System | whoami · env · printenv · export · which · date · kill |
| Shell | history (-c) · help · exit |
Mshell/
├── includes/
│ └── ft_tools.h # prototypes, structs, color & macro defines
├── srcs/
│ ├── ft_main.c # REPL loop, prompt, history write
│ ├── ft_parse.c # command dispatch table
│ ├── ft_split.c # tokenizer
│ ├── ft_utils.c # string helpers, file I/O, colored header
│ └── ft_<command>.c # one file per command
├── header.txt # ASCII logo (color-tagged)
└── Makefile
Commands are wired through a dispatch table — a single array pairing each command name with its function pointer. Adding a command means writing its file, declaring it, and adding one line to the table.
- System calls for files and directories (
open,read,stat,readdir,unlink,rename…) - Recursion over a filesystem tree
- ANSI escape codes for colors and screen control
- Function pointers and dispatch tables
- Building a clean, dependency-free C project with a Makefile
Blackholeisoka Self-taught developer.
Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.