todo.md

Minishell to-do list

What we need to do, how, when, why, where, etc? Split up in two parts: parsing and executing!

Parsing

• Expanding variables into strings
• Reconstructing command string with expanded variables
• Creating token structures
• Creating action structures
• Figuring out how to get file descriptors into actions in a way that makes sense
• Turning tokens into actions in the right order for exec
• Provide linkedlist of actions based on command string given by exec
• Find a good way to "detect" syntax errors, or just in general a way to tell exec a command doesn't make sense

Executing

• Make builtins
• Make interactive input work (readline)
• Make an execution loop (the thing that keeps minishell running)
• Separate the pipex functionality into different functions
  • Something like:
  • Create pipe
  • Create input redirect
  • Create output redirect
  • Execute command with arguments and custom input/output file descriptors?
  • Restore file descriptors (defaulting back to stdin/stdout I guess)
• Get and store existing environment variables
• Make command history (probably in some .history file)
  • Find last line and compare to current command to avoid double entries in history
• Handle newly created environment variables from export
• Make a function that returns the value of an environment variable with a given name
• Find out how non-interactive bash works and make that work (ex.: bash -c "echo a")
• Signal handling (CTRL+C / CTRL+D at least, perhaps other kill signals to clean up before exiting)

Undecided

• Heredoc handling
• Unclosed string handling

General stuff

• Decide on a good project structure
• Find out of a structure other than "all files in the root folder" is allowed
• Add documentation to functions
• Endless testing for segfaults and memory leaks and stuff
• We probably need 1 big struct with EVERYTHING as our global variable that we make accessible in all files
• Probably make a cool readme file with all the features we do and don't support and how to use them

Optional, up for discussion

• Doing the bonus (lol)
• Functions to easily send colored output (for errors, for readline, etc.)
• Making a cool ASCII art logo for on startup
• Give it a name other than Minishell (something more creative)
• Maybe -h or --help flag support that just prints which features our minishell supports