What is pyash?

Pyash is a Unix shell emulator written entirely in Python. Instead of using your computer's real command line, Pyash gives you a text based terminal that runs inside a Python program and behaves like a Unix shell, letting you type familiar commands and see familiar results, but in a safe, contained environment. The main design goal is safety through sandboxing. Pyash only lets you read, write, and move around inside one specific folder it creates, called the shell folder, and it actively checks file paths to stop you from escaping that folder and touching the rest of your computer. This makes it useful as a learning tool for understanding how shells and Python work together, as a safe playground for Capture The Flag style security exercises, or simply as a fun terminal to experiment in. Pyash rebuilds many classic Unix commands from scratch in Python, including navigation and file tools like cd, pwd, ls, mkdir, rm, cp, and mv, text tools like cat, head, tail, and echo, and system information commands like whoami, date, and uptime. It also supports chaining commands together with the double ampersand, so a chain stops safely if one command fails, and it supports piping output from one command into another, similar to a real shell. Output is colored using the colorama library, and past commands are saved to a history file. Users can also add their own extra commands by editing a file that Pyash creates automatically. To use Pyash you need a Unix based operating system, such as Linux, BSD, or MacOS, along with Python and the colorama package. After installing colorama, you clone the repository and run the main Pyash.py file directly. The project is released under the MIT license, meaning it can be used, modified, and distributed freely, including for commercial purposes, as long as the original license is kept with the code.