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1 # @(#)TOUR 8.1 (Berkeley) 5/31/93
2
3 NOTE -- This is the original TOUR paper distributed with ash and
4 does not represent the current state of the shell. It is provided anyway
5 since it provides helpful information for how the shell is structured,
6 but be warned that things have changed -- the current shell is
7 still under development.
8
9 ================================================================
10
11 A Tour through Ash
12
13 Copyright 1989 by Kenneth Almquist.
14
15
16 DIRECTORIES: The subdirectory bltin contains commands which can
17 be compiled stand-alone. The rest of the source is in the main
18 ash directory.
19
20 SOURCE CODE GENERATORS: Files whose names begin with "mk" are
21 programs that generate source code. A complete list of these
22 programs is:
23
24 program intput files generates
25 ------- ------------ ---------
26 mkbuiltins builtins builtins.h builtins.c
27 mkinit *.c init.c
28 mknodes nodetypes nodes.h nodes.c
29 mksignames - signames.h signames.c
30 mksyntax - syntax.h syntax.c
31 mktokens - token.h
32 bltin/mkexpr unary_op binary_op operators.h operators.c
33
34 There are undoubtedly too many of these. Mkinit searches all the
35 C source files for entries looking like:
36
37 INIT {
38 x = 1; /* executed during initialization */
39 }
40
41 RESET {
42 x = 2; /* executed when the shell does a longjmp
43 back to the main command loop */
44 }
45
46 SHELLPROC {
47 x = 3; /* executed when the shell runs a shell procedure */
48 }
49
50 It pulls this code out into routines which are when particular
51 events occur. The intent is to improve modularity by isolating
52 the information about which modules need to be explicitly
53 initialized/reset within the modules themselves.
54
55 Mkinit recognizes several constructs for placing declarations in
56 the init.c file.
57 INCLUDE "file.h"
58 includes a file. The storage class MKINIT makes a declaration
59 available in the init.c file, for example:
60 MKINIT int funcnest; /* depth of function calls */
61 MKINIT alone on a line introduces a structure or union declara-
62 tion:
63 MKINIT
64 struct redirtab {
65 short renamed[10];
66 };
67 Preprocessor #define statements are copied to init.c without any
68 special action to request this.
69
70 INDENTATION: The ash source is indented in multiples of six
71 spaces. The only study that I have heard of on the subject con-
72 cluded that the optimal amount to indent is in the range of four
73 to six spaces. I use six spaces since it is not too big a jump
74 from the widely used eight spaces. If you really hate six space
75 indentation, use the adjind (source included) program to change
76 it to something else.
77
78 EXCEPTIONS: Code for dealing with exceptions appears in
79 exceptions.c. The C language doesn't include exception handling,
80 so I implement it using setjmp and longjmp. The global variable
81 exception contains the type of exception. EXERROR is raised by
82 calling error. EXINT is an interrupt. EXSHELLPROC is an excep-
83 tion which is raised when a shell procedure is invoked. The pur-
84 pose of EXSHELLPROC is to perform the cleanup actions associated
85 with other exceptions. After these cleanup actions, the shell
86 can interpret a shell procedure itself without exec'ing a new
87 copy of the shell.
88
89 INTERRUPTS: In an interactive shell, an interrupt will cause an
90 EXINT exception to return to the main command loop. (Exception:
91 EXINT is not raised if the user traps interrupts using the trap
92 command.) The INTOFF and INTON macros (defined in exception.h)
93 provide uninterruptable critical sections. Between the execution
94 of INTOFF and the execution of INTON, interrupt signals will be
95 held for later delivery. INTOFF and INTON can be nested.
96
97 MEMALLOC.C: Memalloc.c defines versions of malloc and realloc
98 which call error when there is no memory left. It also defines a
99 stack oriented memory allocation scheme. Allocating off a stack
100 is probably more efficient than allocation using malloc, but the
101 big advantage is that when an exception occurs all we have to do
102 to free up the memory in use at the time of the exception is to
103 restore the stack pointer. The stack is implemented using a
104 linked list of blocks.
105
106 STPUTC: If the stack were contiguous, it would be easy to store
107 strings on the stack without knowing in advance how long the
108 string was going to be:
109 p = stackptr;
110 *p++ = c; /* repeated as many times as needed */
111 stackptr = p;
112 The folloing three macros (defined in memalloc.h) perform these
113 operations, but grow the stack if you run off the end:
114 STARTSTACKSTR(p);
115 STPUTC(c, p); /* repeated as many times as needed */
116 grabstackstr(p);
117
118 We now start a top-down look at the code:
119
120 MAIN.C: The main routine performs some initialization, executes
121 the user's profile if necessary, and calls cmdloop. Cmdloop is
122 repeatedly parses and executes commands.
123
124 OPTIONS.C: This file contains the option processing code. It is
125 called from main to parse the shell arguments when the shell is
126 invoked, and it also contains the set builtin. The -i and -j op-
127 tions (the latter turns on job control) require changes in signal
128 handling. The routines setjobctl (in jobs.c) and setinteractive
129 (in trap.c) are called to handle changes to these options.
130
131 PARSING: The parser code is all in parser.c. A recursive des-
132 cent parser is used. Syntax tables (generated by mksyntax) are
133 used to classify characters during lexical analysis. There are
134 three tables: one for normal use, one for use when inside single
135 quotes, and one for use when inside double quotes. The tables
136 are machine dependent because they are indexed by character vari-
137 ables and the range of a char varies from machine to machine.
138
139 PARSE OUTPUT: The output of the parser consists of a tree of
140 nodes. The various types of nodes are defined in the file node-
141 types.
142
143 Nodes of type NARG are used to represent both words and the con-
144 tents of here documents. An early version of ash kept the con-
145 tents of here documents in temporary files, but keeping here do-
146 cuments in memory typically results in significantly better per-
147 formance. It would have been nice to make it an option to use
148 temporary files for here documents, for the benefit of small
149 machines, but the code to keep track of when to delete the tem-
150 porary files was complex and I never fixed all the bugs in it.
151 (AT&T has been maintaining the Bourne shell for more than ten
152 years, and to the best of my knowledge they still haven't gotten
153 it to handle temporary files correctly in obscure cases.)
154
155 The text field of a NARG structure points to the text of the
156 word. The text consists of ordinary characters and a number of
157 special codes defined in parser.h. The special codes are:
158
159 CTLVAR Variable substitution
160 CTLENDVAR End of variable substitution
161 CTLBACKQ Command substitution
162 CTLESC Escape next character
163
164 A variable substitution contains the following elements:
165
166 CTLVAR type name '=' [ alternative-text CTLENDVAR ]
167
168 The type field is a single character specifying the type of sub-
169 stitution. The possible types are:
170
171 VSNORMAL $var
172 VSMINUS ${var-text}
173 VSMINUS|VSNUL ${var:-text}
174 VSPLUS ${var+text}
175 VSPLUS|VSNUL ${var:+text}
176 VSQUESTION ${var?text}
177 VSQUESTION|VSNUL ${var:?text}
178 VSASSIGN ${var=text}
179 VSASSIGN|VSNUL ${var=text}
180
181 The name of the variable comes next, terminated by an equals
182 sign. If the type is not VSNORMAL, then the text field in the
183 substitution follows, terminated by a CTLENDVAR byte.
184
185 Commands in back quotes are parsed and stored in a linked list.
186 The locations of these commands in the string are indicated by
187 the CTLBACKQ character.
188
189 The character CTLESC escapes the next character, so that in case
190 any of the CTL characters mentioned above appear in the input,
191 they can be passed through transparently. CTLESC is also used to
192 escape '*', '?', '[', and '!' characters which were quoted by the
193 user and thus should not be used for file name generation.
194
195 CTLESC characters have proved to be particularly tricky to get
196 right. In the case of here documents which are not subject to
197 variable and command substitution, the parser doesn't insert any
198 CTLESC characters to begin with (so the contents of the text
199 field can be written without any processing). Other here docu-
200 ments, and words which are not subject to splitting and file name
201 generation, have the CTLESC characters removed during the vari-
202 able and command substitution phase. Words which are subject
203 splitting and file name generation have the CTLESC characters re-
204 moved as part of the file name phase.
205
206 EXECUTION: Command execution is handled by the following files:
207 eval.c The top level routines.
208 redir.c Code to handle redirection of input and output.
209 jobs.c Code to handle forking, waiting, and job control.
210 exec.c Code to to path searches and the actual exec sys call.
211 expand.c Code to evaluate arguments.
212 var.c Maintains the variable symbol table. Called from expand.c.
213
214 EVAL.C: Evaltree recursively executes a parse tree. The exit
215 status is returned in the global variable exitstatus. The alter-
216 native entry evalbackcmd is called to evaluate commands in back
217 quotes. It saves the result in memory if the command is a buil-
218 tin; otherwise it forks off a child to execute the command and
219 connects the standard output of the child to a pipe.
220
221 JOBS.C: To create a process, you call makejob to return a job
222 structure, and then call forkshell (passing the job structure as
223 an argument) to create the process. Waitforjob waits for a job
224 to complete. These routines take care of process groups if job
225 control is defined.
226
227 REDIR.C: Ash allows file descriptors to be redirected and then
228 restored without forking off a child process. This is accom-
229 plished by duplicating the original file descriptors. The redir-
230 tab structure records where the file descriptors have be dupli-
231 cated to.
232
233 EXEC.C: The routine find_command locates a command, and enters
234 the command in the hash table if it is not already there. The
235 third argument specifies whether it is to print an error message
236 if the command is not found. (When a pipeline is set up,
237 find_command is called for all the commands in the pipeline be-
238 fore any forking is done, so to get the commands into the hash
239 table of the parent process. But to make command hashing as
240 transparent as possible, we silently ignore errors at that point
241 and only print error messages if the command cannot be found
242 later.)
243
244 The routine shellexec is the interface to the exec system call.
245
246 EXPAND.C: Arguments are processed in three passes. The first
247 (performed by the routine argstr) performs variable and command
248 substitution. The second (ifsbreakup) performs word splitting
249 and the third (expandmeta) performs file name generation. If the
250 "/u" directory is simulated, then when "/u/username" is replaced
251 by the user's home directory, the flag "didudir" is set. This
252 tells the cd command that it should print out the directory name,
253 just as it would if the "/u" directory were implemented using
254 symbolic links.
255
256 VAR.C: Variables are stored in a hash table. Probably we should
257 switch to extensible hashing. The variable name is stored in the
258 same string as the value (using the format "name=value") so that
259 no string copying is needed to create the environment of a com-
260 mand. Variables which the shell references internally are preal-
261 located so that the shell can reference the values of these vari-
262 ables without doing a lookup.
263
264 When a program is run, the code in eval.c sticks any environment
265 variables which precede the command (as in "PATH=xxx command") in
266 the variable table as the simplest way to strip duplicates, and
267 then calls "environment" to get the value of the environment.
268 There are two consequences of this. First, if an assignment to
269 PATH precedes the command, the value of PATH before the assign-
270 ment must be remembered and passed to shellexec. Second, if the
271 program turns out to be a shell procedure, the strings from the
272 environment variables which preceded the command must be pulled
273 out of the table and replaced with strings obtained from malloc,
274 since the former will automatically be freed when the stack (see
275 the entry on memalloc.c) is emptied.
276
277 BUILTIN COMMANDS: The procedures for handling these are scat-
278 tered throughout the code, depending on which location appears
279 most appropriate. They can be recognized because their names al-
280 ways end in "cmd". The mapping from names to procedures is
281 specified in the file builtins, which is processed by the mkbuil-
282 tins command.
283
284 A builtin command is invoked with argc and argv set up like a
285 normal program. A builtin command is allowed to overwrite its
286 arguments. Builtin routines can call nextopt to do option pars-
287 ing. This is kind of like getopt, but you don't pass argc and
288 argv to it. Builtin routines can also call error. This routine
289 normally terminates the shell (or returns to the main command
290 loop if the shell is interactive), but when called from a builtin
291 command it causes the builtin command to terminate with an exit
292 status of 2.
293
294 The directory bltins contains commands which can be compiled in-
295 dependently but can also be built into the shell for efficiency
296 reasons. The makefile in this directory compiles these programs
297 in the normal fashion (so that they can be run regardless of
298 whether the invoker is ash), but also creates a library named
299 bltinlib.a which can be linked with ash. The header file bltin.h
300 takes care of most of the differences between the ash and the
301 stand-alone environment. The user should call the main routine
302 "main", and #define main to be the name of the routine to use
303 when the program is linked into ash. This #define should appear
304 before bltin.h is included; bltin.h will #undef main if the pro-
305 gram is to be compiled stand-alone.
306
307 CD.C: This file defines the cd and pwd builtins. The pwd com-
308 mand runs /bin/pwd the first time it is invoked (unless the user
309 has already done a cd to an absolute pathname), but then
310 remembers the current directory and updates it when the cd com-
311 mand is run, so subsequent pwd commands run very fast. The main
312 complication in the cd command is in the docd command, which
313 resolves symbolic links into actual names and informs the user
314 where the user ended up if he crossed a symbolic link.
315
316 SIGNALS: Trap.c implements the trap command. The routine set-
317 signal figures out what action should be taken when a signal is
318 received and invokes the signal system call to set the signal ac-
319 tion appropriately. When a signal that a user has set a trap for
320 is caught, the routine "onsig" sets a flag. The routine dotrap
321 is called at appropriate points to actually handle the signal.
322 When an interrupt is caught and no trap has been set for that
323 signal, the routine "onint" in error.c is called.
324
325 OUTPUT: Ash uses it's own output routines. There are three out-
326 put structures allocated. "Output" represents the standard out-
327 put, "errout" the standard error, and "memout" contains output
328 which is to be stored in memory. This last is used when a buil-
329 tin command appears in backquotes, to allow its output to be col-
330 lected without doing any I/O through the UNIX operating system.
331 The variables out1 and out2 normally point to output and errout,
332 respectively, but they are set to point to memout when appropri-
333 ate inside backquotes.
334
335 INPUT: The basic input routine is pgetc, which reads from the
336 current input file. There is a stack of input files; the current
337 input file is the top file on this stack. The code allows the
338 input to come from a string rather than a file. (This is for the
339 -c option and the "." and eval builtin commands.) The global
340 variable plinno is saved and restored when files are pushed and
341 popped from the stack. The parser routines store the number of
342 the current line in this variable.
343
344 DEBUGGING: If DEBUG is defined in shell.h, then the shell will
345 write debugging information to the file $HOME/trace. Most of
346 this is done using the TRACE macro, which takes a set of printf
347 arguments inside two sets of parenthesis. Example:
348 "TRACE(("n=%d0, n))". The double parenthesis are necessary be-
349 cause the preprocessor can't handle functions with a variable
350 number of arguments. Defining DEBUG also causes the shell to
351 generate a core dump if it is sent a quit signal. The tracing
352 code is in show.c.