satharus/chell

The chad shell.

Chell

The chad shell.

Why?

I want to practice C and Vim. That's literally it. That's kinda the whole purpose of the project. I am using Vim as my main text editor and wanted to try it out in an actual small project.

Should I use it?

I don't think so. But go ahead if you want.

How is it chad?

It's not.

Running Chell

Just run gcc -Wall -o chell src/*.c and then ./chell or make && make run from any existing shell and you will get the chell "bash-like" prompt.

Demo

chell's Issues

Add command history

Add command history like in BASH where you can use arrow up and arrow down to cycle previously run commands.

Backspace not working properly

The cursor is not shifted to the right place when using backspace in the middle of a string. While the deleting works, it feels really awkward.

Edit: Please don't use any external libraries, there was a lot of effort put into implementing a minimal readline-like interface which doesn't have external dependencies.

Chell/src/chad-readline.c

Lines 52 to 83 in 54ecd43

	else //not at the end
	{
	//Shift all to the left
	for (int i = *cursor; i < *currentLength; i++)
	line[i-1] = line[i];
	//decrement the length
	(*currentLength)--;
	//calculate the number of movements needed forward
	int forward = *currentLength - *cursor;
	//move to the right
	for (int i = 0; i < forward; i++)
	{
	printf("%c%c%c", 27, 91, RIGHT_ARROW + 'A');
	}
	//go back and delete on the way
	for (int i = 0; i < *currentLength; i++)
	{
	printf("%s", "\b \b");
	}
	//move the cursor back
	cursor--;
	//print the new line
	printf("%s", line);
	//Go back to the original cursor position
	for (int i = 0; i < forward-1; i++)
	printf("%c%c%c", 27, 91, LEFT_ARROW + 'A');
	}

When I type mid word. It's typed in the end along with the rest of the command again.

Steps to reproduce

• $ hello
• press left 3 times
• press s
• press s

Expected output

• After first s: $ hesllo (Cursor should be after the s character)
• After second s: $ hessllo

Actual output

• After first s: $ hesllo (notice the extra space, and that the cursor has moved to the end)
• After second s: $ hesllo sllo

Ctrl + C exits the shell

Hitting ctrl + c exits the shell, which isn't standard behaviour. The shill should only exit using exit or q. This input should be handled.

Add tab auto-completion

Tab auto completion is pretty much standard on all shells, I've been wanting to add it but anyone is welcome to try this as a Hacktoberfest 2020 contribution :D!

I am trying to keep dependencies to a minimum, so using GNU readline is not an option, sadly.

Giving the shell the path to a file or a directory or using ./ says "Command not found."

This isn't correct. Before checking $PATH for the command input, it should first check if it is a file, directory, or if the input starts with ./ in order to execute it.

Command line interface not editable

You can't move between the letters using the left and right arrow keys. The characters ^[[D and ^[[C are written instead.

I am trying to keep dependencies to a minimum, so using GNU readline is not an option, sadly.

"cd" builtin ignored is cd binary exists on PATH

the cd builtin command gets ignored when a cd binary is on the $PATH
on Fedora /usr/bin/cd is provided by bash and prevents Chell from changing directories properly

"man" won't run

Running man man or man anything leads to this output:

man: can't execute cat: No such file or directory man: command exited with status 255: (cd /usr/share/man && /usr/lib/man-db/zsoelim) | (cd /usr/share/man && /usr/lib/man-db/manconv -f UTF-8:ISO-8859-1 -t ISO-8859-1//IGNORE) | (cd /usr/share/man && tbl) | (cd /usr/share/man && nroff -mandoc -rLL=120n -rLT=120n -Tutf8)