h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey there, I've gotten into a bit of a scrape with some C coding. I'm trying to get a command line shell program that's capable of running other programs and some basic system calls. More specifically, I'm trying to make it so that I can background programs by putting a & after them in the command line, trying to pipe the output of one program to the input of another with a |, and trying to figure out how to redirect I/O with >, >>, and <. I'd originally just put the code onto h2g2 to make it easier to copy/paste the text into different text editors that had incompatible copy/paste functions (I don't know WHY they're incompatible, I just know that they ARE incompatible). But then I thought: hey, this is h2g2! The grand repository of knowledge! Surely SOMEONE out there might have some general pointers. Anyway, http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/F25840?thread=1161781&skip=0&show=20 is where I put the code. If it looks like an unintelligible mess, sorry. If it looks salvageable with incredible simplicity, and you feel generous, thanks! Might save me a bit of sleep. Anyway, whether you see it or not, have a good day.