42-pipex

Unix System Programming and Pipelines: A Pipex Project Overview

This is a project for 42Heilbronn school's curriculum.

The goal of the project is to write a program that will implement the behavior of the shell | and redirections.

Description

mandatory part:

run make

The program behaves exactly the same as this shell command:

$> < file1 cmd1 | cmd2 > file2

The program will be executed as follows:

./pipex file1 cmd1 cmd2 file2

• file1: the name of the input file
• cmd1: the first shell command to be executed with its parameters
• cmd2: the second shell command to be executed with its parameters
• file2: the name of the output file

e.g: $> ./pipex infile "ls -l" "wc -l" outfile should behave like: < infile ls -l | wc -l > outfile

bonus part:

run make bonus

• Handling multiple pipes:

./pipex file1 cmd1 cmd2 cmd3 ... cmdn file2 should behave like < file1 cmd1 | cmd2 | cmd3 ... | cmdn > file2.

• Supporting << and >> when the first parameter is "here_doc":

./pipex here_doc LIMITER cmd cmd1 ... cmdn file should behave like cmd << LIMITER | cmd1 ... | cmdn >> file.

What i learned:

• how to use pipes to redirect input and output between multiple processes.
• how to check for unclosed pipes using the lsof command.
• how to use the fork() function to create child processes.
• how to use the execve() function to execute shell commands in child processes.
• how to use file descriptors, such as dup() and dup2(), to redirect input and output between processes.
• how to handle errors and manage memory to avoid issues like memory leaks and unexpected program termination.
• Bonus: Handling multiple pipes and supporting << and >> for "here_doc" input.

These concepts are fundamental to Unix system programming and pipelines, and are widely used in various applications, such as data processing and networking.