Description
Introduction
The aim of this project is to help students understand process management, input and
output redirection, and inter-process communication in an operating system. Upon
completion of the project, students should be able to implement a useful system program
using related Linux system calls.
Program Usage
In this assignment, you need to implement a non-interactive command line interpreter (i.e.,
a simplified version of a standard Linux shell program) that supports redirection and multilevel pipes. The program name is myshell.
Suppose there are 4 files in the current working directory:
myshell myshell.c in.txt out.txt
Here is a sample usage of myshell:
$> ./myshell < in.txt > out.txt
$> represents the shell prompt.
< means input redirection, which is used to redirect the file content as the standard input
> means output redirection, which is used to redirect the standard output to a text file
Thus, you can easily use the given test cases to test your program
Given the content of in.txt, here is the content of out.txt after running the program:
Content of in.txt Content in out.txt
ls myshell
myshell.c
in.txt
out.txt
If you simply would like to print the expected output on the screen, you can use:
$> ./myshell < in.txt
Project TA – Peter CHUNG (cspeter@cse.ust.hk): Handling questions before the deadline
Grader TA – Wang ZHE (zwangec@cse.ust.hk): Grading and appeal handling after the deadline
Page 2 of 5
Getting Started
myshell_skeleton.c is a starting point. You don’t need to start from scratch.
To get started, rename the file as myshell.c
Read carefully the documentation in the provided code. You are not required to start from
scratch as the base file already provides you many useful features (e.g. command line
parsing). Necessary programming concepts will also be introduced during the related lab(s).
Please note that C programming language (instead of C++) must be used to complete this
assignment. C is not the same as C++. C99 option is added to allow a more flexible coding
style. Here is the command to compile myshell.c
$> gcc -std=c99 -o myshell myshell.c
Restrictions
In this assignment, you CANNOT use system or popen function defined in the C Standard
library. The purpose of the project assignment is to help students understand process
management and inter-process communication. It is because these 2 functions can directly
process the whole command (including pipe and redirection).
You should use the related Linux system calls such as pipe and dup2. When connecting
pipes, POSIX file operations such as read, open, write, close should be used. You
should not use fread, fopen, fwrite, fclose from the C standard library.
Assumptions
You can assume that the input format is valid.
There won’t be commands with both redirection and pipe at the same time.
We assume that each command line has at most 256 characters (including NULL)
We assume that there exists at most 8 pipe segments.
Each pipe segment may have at most 8 arguments
• Note: execvp system call needs to store an extra NULL item to represent the end
of the parameter list. Thus, you will find the constant is set to 9 (instead of 8) in the
starter code. For details, please read the comment lines provided in the starter code
We assume that there exists at most 1 input redirection and at most 1 output redirection.
For output redirection, you can assume the output file does not exist in the current working
directory. In other words, the grader will remove the temporary output text files (i.e.,
tmp*.txt).
You only need to handle 2 space characters: tab(\t) and space( ).
Project TA – Peter CHUNG (cspeter@cse.ust.hk): Handling questions before the deadline
Grader TA – Wang ZHE (zwangec@cse.ust.hk): Grading and appeal handling after the deadline
Page 3 of 5
Feature 1: Redirection
Instead of typing the command on the console, the input can be redirected from a text file.
The file input redirection feature can be completed by using the dup/dup2 system calls
(they are discussed in the lab). The key idea is to close the default stdin and replace the
stdin with the file descriptor of an input file.
We can use the following command to count the number of lines of the file (myshell.c).
Here is a sample input file redirection usage:
$> wc -l < myshell.c
Like the file input redirection, the output can also be redirected to a text file. The file output
redirection feature can be completed by using the dup/dup2 system calls. The key idea is
to close the stdout and replace the stdout with the file descriptor of an output file.
We can use the following command to redirect the output of the ls command to an output
text file (tmp_out_only.txt). Here is a sample output redirection usage:
$> ls -lh > tmp_out_only.txt
Please note that we have test cases with a mix of both input and output redirection. For
example:
$> wc -l < myshell.c > tmp_in_then_out.txt
$> wc -l > tmp_out_then_in.txt < myshell.c
Feature 2: Multi-level pipe
In a shell program, a pipe symbol (|) is used to connect the output of the first command as
the input of the second command. For example,
$> ls | sort
The ls command lists the contents of the current working directory. As the output of ls is
already connected to sort, it won’t print out the content to the screen. After the output of
ls has been sorted by sort command, the sorted list of files appears on the screen.
In this project, you are required to support multiple-level pipes.
Project TA – Peter CHUNG (cspeter@cse.ust.hk): Handling questions before the deadline
Grader TA – Wang ZHE (zwangec@cse.ust.hk): Grading and appeal handling after the deadline
Page 4 of 5
Example 1:
$> echo a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 a6 a7
The above command has 1 pipe segment
That segment has 8 arguments
This above example is useful to test the upper bound of the number of arguments
Example 2:
$> ls | sort -r | sort | sort -r | sort | sort -r | sort | sort -r
The above command has 8 segments.
Each segment has either 1 argument or 2 arguments.
The above example is useful to test the upper bound of the number of pipe segments
Example 3:
$> ls -l -h
The input may contain several empty space characters.
The above example is useful to test whether you handle tabs and spaces correctly.
Sample Input Files
In total, 10 sample input files are provided:
• Case 1-3: Simple commands with different number of arguments
• Case 4-7: Redirection commands
o For Case 4, 6 and 7, myshell.c is required in the same directory
o For Case 5-7, output text files will be created after executing the commands
These temporary text files can be easily removed by rm tmp*.txt
• Case 8-10: Pipe commands
Please note that the output content is dependent on the machine and the current working
directory. So, it is impossible to provide the sample output files. To double-check, you can
always run the sample Linux executable on the same machine and the same current working
directory.
Sample Executable
The sample executable (runnable in a CS Lab 2 machine) is provided for reference. After the
file is downloaded, you need to add an execution permission bit to the file. For example:
$> chmod u+x myshell
Project TA – Peter CHUNG (cspeter@cse.ust.hk): Handling questions before the deadline
Grader TA – Wang ZHE (zwangec@cse.ust.hk): Grading and appeal handling after the deadline
Page 5 of 5
Development Environment
CS Lab 2 is the development environment. Please use one of the following machines
(csl2wkXX.cse.ust.hk), where XX=01…40. The grader will use the same platform.
In other words, “my program works on my own laptop/desktop computer, but not in one of
the CS Lab 2 machines” is an invalid appeal reason. Please test your program on our
development environment (not on your own desktop/laptop) thoughtfully, even you are
running your own Linux OS. Remote login is supported on all CS Lab 2 machines.
Marking Scheme
1. (100%) Correctness of the 10 provided test cases. We don’t have other hidden test
cases, but we will check the source codes to avoid students hard coding the test
cases in their programs.
a. Example of hard coding: a student may simply detect the input (it is possible
because all test cases are released) and then display the corresponding
output without implementing the simplified shell program
2. Please test your program on our development environment (not on your own
desktop/laptop) thoughtfully
3. Please fill in your name, ITSC email, and declare that you do not copy from others. A
template is already provided near the top of the source file.
4. Automatically get 0 marks if system or popen function is used in your code
Plagiarism: Both parties (i.e., students providing the codes and students copying the codes)
will receive 0 marks. Near the end of the semester, a plagiarism detection software (JPlag)
will be used to identify cheating cases. DON’T do any cheating!
Submission
File to submit:
myshell.c
Please check carefully you submit the correct file.
In the past semesters, some students submitted the executable file instead of the source
file. Zero marks will be given as the grader cannot grade the executable file.
You are not required to submit other files, such as the input test cases.
Late Submission
For late submission, please submit it via email to the grader TA.
There is a 10% deduction, and only 1 day late is allowed (Reference: Chapter 1)
