Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Ced – C REPL in 50 lines of POSIX shell
Yesterday, I found myself writing a little C throwaway script to test something out. That happens often enough to clutter my HOME and some other directories with these useless text files and binaries. So I thought that I can use a repl instead. Quick google search didn't find any good and tested solutions. So I wrote my own with help of a tcc compiler. Why POSIX Shell? Because it would be far too easy in a normal language (it'd probably take me ~10 minutes to rewrite this in Nim) and where is fun in that?
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
- 1GI
Hi all! I'm going into my freshman year, and figured that the best way to prepare for the intro to programming Racket course would be to implement my own garbage-collected, dynamically typed, functional programming language in C ;) Anyways... here's the repo: https://github.com/liam-ilan/crumb I started learning C over the summer, so I still have a whole lot to learn... Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! :D
2023 · its alternatives →
- 2
Welp, second time posting this project! Bourne shell's ALGOL-inspired syntax seems a bit verbose, and while `rc` is quite nice, it lacks some features I'd prefer in a shell (this is probably by design). Though don't let the name I chose fool you, this shell is probably more related to `tcl` or `csh` than `rc`, except in some small places. It's been a while since my last post. Notable new features include a stack trace (via `caller`), `try`/`catch` (but only with user-supplied strings), `fc`, `disown`, login shell detection, and a shorter argv alias (`${argv number}` becomes `$number`).…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3LC
I made a simple virtual machine that runs C in the browser.This project is made as an experiment to see if C can be learned easier if the lower level is covered in paralel. Sandbox: https://vasyop.github.io/miniC-hosting Tutorial part 1: https://vasyop.github.io/miniC-hosting/?0 More info: https://github.com/vasyop/miniC-hosting/blob/master/README.md Please support this project: https://github.com/vasyop/miniC-hosting/blob/master/support.md
2019 · its alternatives →
- 4
sed to C translator written in sed. Contribute to lhoursquentin/sed-bin development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
About a month ago I started a suprisingly-not-that tricky project to build an experimental python repl that I could use instead of bash as a daily shell in windows, mac or linux. It"s more hack-for-exploration than a production ready shell, but here it is! Hope somebody finds it anywhere near as interesting to check out as I found making it. Disclaimer: I know about xonsh and love it (if you haven't heard of it, google it). This project is more pure python and less python and bash interacting - see the readme for more details.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6RC
GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.
2016 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →
- 7IW
My book on "GNU grep and ripgrep" is free to download today and tomorrow [1][2] Code snippets, example files and sample chapters are available on GitHub [3] The book uses plenty of examples and regular expressions are also covered from scratch. The book is suitable for beginners as well as serves as a reference. Hope you find it useful, I would be grateful for your feedback and suggestions. I used pandoc+xelatex [4] to generate the pdf. [1] https://gumroad.com/l/gnugrep_ripgrep [2] https://leanpub.com/gnugrep_ripgrep [3]…
2019 · its alternatives →
- 8
I originally was just messing with pi-autoresearch. Gave it a sample task to build the most portable coding agent. First cut was 6 KB of shell. Great for one-shots, unusable interactively. I was shocked it actually worked. Started building up -- adding features — but with a self-imposed rule: no new dependencies, and sub 500 LOC. This thing had to be truly portable. Just sh, curl, awk. System primitives only. Which means I did some genuinely disgusting things in awk, including JSON parsing and the OpenAI Responses tool loop with reasoning items carried across turns. It's now ~400 lines. In…
Apr 2026 · pu.dev · its alternatives →
- 9
A smarter, more intuitive, and readable shell. You
2020 · murex.rocks · its alternatives →
- 10
I created this because sometimes I want more than rlwrap but less than emacs. icl aims to hit that middle sweet spot. It's a terminal application with context-aware auto-complete, an interactive object inspector, auto-indentation, syntax colouring, persistent history, and much more. It uses sly to communicate with the child lisp process and aims to be compatible with any sly-supporting implementation. I hope others find it useful!
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
A smarter shell and scripting environment with advanced features designed for usability, safety and productivity (eg smarter DevOps tooling) - lmorg/murex
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
- 13
Justfiles are like Makefiles, except Just is a command runner, whereas Make is a build system. As I understand it, Just was built to be a less arcane version of Make for collecting commands common to a code repository. When I first learned about Just, I realized that parsing arguments and running commands is exactly what shell scripts do, and there probably isn't much Just does that sh doesn't. This project proves that hypothesis by compiling Justfiles to portable (POSIX-compatible) shell scripts. just.sh is particularly useful for running Justfiles in esoteric environments where Just may…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
A short introduction to the Unix command line
2015 · learnenough.com · its alternatives →
- 15
- 16
Redstart is a lightweight Lisp interpreter written in C++ with a focus on shell scripting. It lets you combine the expressive power of Lisp with the practicality of the Unix shell: you can run commands, capture output, pipe between processes, and still use Lisp syntax for logic and structure. Think of it as writing your shell scripts in Lisp instead of Bash.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17
CJIT▲83CJIT started as a hobby project around Fabrice Bellard’s tinyCC and slowly grew into something much more practical. It is now a small portable C compiler and runner that works across Linux, macOS, and Windows, can self host, and is packaged as a single executable. What mattered most to me was keeping the barrier to entry low. You can take one small binary, drop it onto a system, and compile or run C code using the libraries already available there, without setting up a full toolchain or installing a large stack of dependencies. I find that useful for quick prototyping, testing, auditing,…
2024 · dyne.org · its alternatives →
- 18
Seven modules teaching C the way safety-critical systems are actually built: MATH → STRUCT → CODE → TEST. Each module answers one question: Does it exist? (Pulse), Is it normal? (Baseline), Is it regular? (Timing), Is it trending? (Drift), Which sensor to trust? (Consensus), How to handle overflow? (Pressure), What do we do about it? (Mode). Every module is closed (no dependencies), total (handles all inputs), deterministic, and O(1). 83 tests passing. Built this after 30 years in UNIX systems. Wanted something that teaches the rigour behind certified systems without requiring a decade of…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
I rewrote the most common core string.h functions in pure C. I mostly did it to learn pointers and string. Would love to get any feedbacks:)
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20IB
This weekend I created stacklib.h - a single-header library that brings Forth-style stack operations to C. It implements a basic interpreter with: - Stack operations (push/pop/dup/swap/over/drop) - Arithmetic (+, -, *, /) - Output (., emit, cr) - Stack inspection (.s, depth) Example usage: Stack s; stack_init(&s); dict_init(); exec(&s, "10 20 + ."); // Prints "30" exec(&s, "1 2 3 4 .s"); // Shows stack contents The library is self-contained, requires no dependencies, and handles basic error checking. It was inspired by wanting to understand…
2025 · its alternatives →
- 21
400+ tested C programs, all 91 K&R solutions, free quizzes
Jul 2026 · c-program-example.com · its alternatives →
- 22GA
I built GRSH because I wanted a modern, memory-safe shell that feels native to FreeBSD but works seamlessly on macOS. While there are many shells out there, GRSH is my take on a minimal, fast, and secure command interpreter written entirely in Rust. It's designed for users who want the safety guarantees of Rust without the overhead of more bloated alternatives. I'm currently working on the official FreeBSD port. I’d love to get feedback on the shell's behavior and performance from the community. Github: https://github.com/antoniomalara301289/grsh
Jan 2026 · grimreaper.icu · its alternatives →
- 23CO
First tutorial to date. Writing your first C program, includes a link at the bottom with a detailed look at printf() as optional reading. I would love some feedback, as I intend writing up a lot of dev articles for people to learn from : www.xanthu.com/first-c-program
2013 · its alternatives →
- 24
A small tool that parses C declarations and outputs a simple visual representation at each stage, as it encounters arrays, pointers or functions. The program uses a table-driven lexer and a hand-written, shift-reduce parser. No external dependencies apart from the standard library.
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Going into freshman year, figured I should build an interpreter alternatives
- Zrc, I tried making a Unix shell scripting language with Tcl syntax alternatives
- Learn C and its lower levels interactively, in the browser alternatives
- Sed to C translator written in sed alternatives
- Clamshell- an experimental Python based shell alternatives
- Replify – Create a REPL for any command alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →