UNIX Shell Variant - A basic unix shell with some new additional features.

It aims at developing a very unix shell which allows user to run a all basic unix commands. The code for the commands is also explicitly coded, where we take use of system calls to interact with the kernel. The programming language used is C++, which is considered best to use for working upon core related projects as it is quite efficient and fast and comes with a whole lot of utilities.

The purpose of a shell is to take from user a command, interpret it, and make the operating system to do the corresponding job if the command is valid, otherwise log out the error. The shell itself does not get employed to perform the corresponding job, it just interpret what service the user is asking for, and make the corresponding executable to run. It waits for the executable to finish, and resume its functioning (i.e taking commands from the user) after the job has been done. Hence, a shell can also be called as command line interpreter. A shell also allows the user to run executable of there own. A few commands are build-in in the shell itself, like the change directory command, where we are required to change the directory of running process, and this has to be done within the context of process only, any other executable must not be employed for this job.

Our shell can be run using the linux terminal. Here are the necessary steps one should follow if they want to see it working locally:

1. Clone the code from our github repository using the command: git clone https://github.com/hemilpanchiwala/Shell.git

2. You need to install the libzip library in your system to use the zip and unzip features of the Shell. For installing libzip, please follow the instructions given here https://github.com/nih-at/libzip/blob/master/INSTALL.md.

3. Once installed, you are ready to use complete features of the Shell.

4. For running the Shell from any directory, you need to set its path in the environment variable $PATH through the .bashrc file. Refer this link for setting the $PATH variable.

5. Now, just run the myshell from any directory and enjoy using our Shell!

Please check out the live recording of the UNIX Shell at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FL9vuSBjzV47zD9HZnfUyVB824laBG_t/view?usp=sharing.