tiny-shell-rs

A minimal UNIX-like shell implemented in Rust.
This project is both a learning journey and an attempt to design a practical, extensible shell from scratch.

Goals

tiny-shell-rs emphasizes the following principles:

• Extensibility: Modular architecture for easy function addition and replacement
• Testability: Core logic designed with unit and integration testing in mind
• Consistency: Uniform conventions for code structure, CLI behavior, and error reporting

Architecture Overview

• See Design Document for architecture and module-level details.

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository
2. (Optional) Rename .tinyshrc.sample to .tinyshrc and place it in your home directory
3. (Optional) Adjust configuration values as needed (or skip — defaults will apply)

cargo run

Features

Implemented Features

• Basic command execution (e.g., ls, echo)
• Built-in commands (e.g., cd, exit, help)
• Path resolution (command vs ./command)
• Piping (command1 | command2 | command3)
• Redirection (command > file, command < file)
• Command history
• Configuration file loading (.tinyshrc — ini-like format)
• Environment variable management (export, unset)
• Environment variable expansion ($HOME, ${VAR})
• Tilde expansion (~/path)

Work in Progress / Planned

These features are currently being designed or prototyped:

• Wildcard/glob expansion (**/*.txt)
• Command substitution ($(command))
• Background execution (command &)
• Job control (jobs, fg, bg)
• Signal handling (Ctrl+C interrupt, SIGTSTP, etc.)
• Auto-completion and suggestions