executing code under a child process and another tcp question

[tyler]

Hello everyone,,
Though these questions may bwe boardering on the relm of programming, I 
wasn't really sure where else to ask them, I am aware of the 
blindprogramming list, but don't like to sign up to lists with high traffic 
like that one, because sometimes its hard for me to check my email, and when 
I get back (just from being on the blindgamers list, and the three lists 
owned by the same organization as the programming at blindprogramming) after 
not reading email for like 4 days, I had over 700 emails.
Anyway, I have a couple questions,
I read up on fork, and found that it isn't just something used to eat your 
food with, but you can spawn other processes with it.
But, my main idea was a pipe, I wanted to spawn a child process, and create 
a pipe to it, so I read up on pipes to.
The only thing I have been able to find is how to get my process to execute 
shell commands,
Do I have to stick to shell commands, or can I actually switch execution 
between child and parent.
Also, how do I get the pid of the parent process?
Last, I want to start playing with TCP.
If I send in the raw mode, can I just send a struct as a packet?
If so, that will only take me reading up on how packetts are formed (I know 
the basics) but not the exact ways, and then I can just create a struct to 
represent a packet, and send it to where ever I wish. I also as a little 
example wish to create a ping program, and a port scanner, I can do the port 
scanner fairly easy I think, with minimal research, but what does the ping 
program do? I haven't been able to figure that one out, and I have used 
numerous packett sniffers.
Things just look garbled.
Thanks for your help,


Tyler Littlefield.
Check out our website:
http://tysplace.the-leetest.net
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livejournal.com/~tylerrl
[my programs don't have bugs, just randomly added features]
[failure is not an option, it comes bundled with windows!]