Rust Shell Implementation

A lightweight, cross-platform shell implementation written in Rust. This shell provides basic command-line functionality with built-in commands and support for external commands and command history.

Features

• Cross-platform support (Linux, macOS, Windows)
• Built-in commands implementation
• Command history with persistence
• Environment variable support
• Platform-specific command prompts
• Directory navigation with path normalization
• File operations and text processing commands

Built-in Commands

• cd - Change directory
• pwd - Print working directory
• ls - List directory contents
• echo - Display text
• clear - Clear screen
• env - Display environment variables
• cat - Concatenate and display file contents
• grep - Search text using patterns
• find - Search for files in directory hierarchy
• head - Output the first part of files
• tail - Output the last part of files

Prerequisites

Make sure you have Rust and Cargo installed on your system. If not, you can install them from rustup.rs.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/miky-rola/shell/

2. Build the project:

cargo build --release

3. Run the shell:

cargo run --release

Project Structure

src/
├── main.rs         # Entry point and shell initialization
├── shell.rs        # Core shell implementation
├── command_execution.rs       # Core shell implementation
└── shell_type.rs   # Shell type enumeration and related functionality
└── builtin.rs      # conatins the built in commands
└── utils.rs        # utils for shell

Dependencies

Add these dependencies to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
anyhow = "1.0.68"                                
bytes = "1.3.0"                                 
thiserror = "1.0.38"                             
dirs = "5.0"
hostname = "0.3"
which = "4.4"
chrono = "0.4"
filetime = "0.2"
glob = "0.3"

Usage

Basic Usage

1. Start the shell:

cargo run --release

2. Use built-in commands:

$ pwd                    # Print working directory
$ cd ~/Documents        # Change directory
$ ls                    # List files
$ echo Hello, World!    # Print text

Command History

• Use Up/Down arrow keys to navigate through command history
• Command history is automatically saved and persists between sessions
• History file is stored in your home directory as .shell_history (Unix) or .shell_history.txt (Windows)

Example Session

user@hostname:~$ ls
Documents    Downloads    Pictures
user@hostname:~$ cd Documents
user@hostname:~/Documents$ pwd
/home/user/Documents
user@hostname:~/Documents$ echo "Hello from Rust Shell!"
Hello from Rust Shell!

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Known Limitations

• Limited shell scripting capabilities
• Basic command line editing features
• No pipeline operations support yet
• Limited wildcard expansion

Future Improvements

• Add support for command pipelines (|)
• Implement input/output redirection
• Add shell scripting capabilities
• Implement job control
• Add more built-in commands
• Improve tab completion with context awareness
• Add alias support
• Implement environment variable expansion

Acknowledgments

• The Rust community for excellent documentation and crates
• Various Unix shell implementations that inspired this project