This was one of my favorite exercises in my introductory C classes in college. I'm gratified to see other people with warm and enlightened reactions to implemen

This was one of my favorite exercises in my introductory C classes in college. I'm gratified to see other people with warm and enlightened reactions to implementing something like this; it was a monumental and eye-opening assignment for me and I couldn't help but tinker with it for weeks. Many others saw it as just a box ticking exercise with annoying string and OS munging, but it felt like I had a secret of the universe laid bare for me in seeing how to go from toy C programs to a useful shell that accelerated some special purpose tasks.