Simple shell for Unix-like systems written in C

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Aleksandr Lebedev db5aef12c2 PS1 variable support, ~ expansion and pretty pwd - if arsh has a PS1 env var, it will use it to display prompt. It supports esc sequences, \u, \w - if '~' is used, it will be expanded to $HOME env var value - if PS1 env var uses \w, and $PWD is somewhere inside $HOME, then it will show '~' in prompt instead of a long path - arsh sets $SHELL env var on startup		2026-04-21 01:36:40 +02:00
.gitignore	Initial commit	2026-02-19 14:18:59 +01:00
LICENSE	Initial commit	2026-02-19 14:18:59 +01:00
main.c	PS1 variable support, ~ expansion and pretty pwd	2026-04-21 01:36:40 +02:00
README.org	Updated README	2026-02-20 01:40:30 +01:00

arsh - ARchaic SHell

Simple shell for Unix-like systems written in C, that has a funny name (for germans).

Features

Can run commands
You can pipe stdout of one command to stdin of another (ex. cat main.c | wc --lines)
Variables expansion with $PATH and ${HOME} syntax
Run subcomands with $(hostname) or `pwd` (works with pipes)
cd builtin command (cd without arguments moves you to $HOME)
exit builtin command
CTRL+C stops running command
Custom readline function
Run scripts with arsh /path/to/script or by putting #!/usr/bin/env arsh at the first line of a script and making it executable
Run commands with arsh -c 'echo $PATH' to launch something quickly with arsh.

To build it, you don't need any external dependencies. Example with gcc:

gcc main.c -O3 -o arsh