parent send command line arguments to child

parent send command line arguments to child

I am writing a program that creates a pipe, forks, then the parent sends
the command line arguments to the child one char at a time. The child is
supposed to count them, and then the parent reaps the child and prints out
how many arguments there were. Here is what I have so far:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
pid_t pid;
int status;
int comm[2];
char buffer[BUFSIZ];
// set up pipe
if (pipe(comm)) {
printf("pipe error\n");
return -1;
}
// call fork()
pid = fork();
// fork failed
if (pid < 0) {
printf("fork error %d\n", pid);
return -1;
}
else if (pid == 0) {
// -- running in child process --
int nChars = 0;
close(comm[1]);
// Receive characters from parent process via pipe
// one at a time, and count them.
while(read(comm[0], buffer, sizeof(buffer)) != '\n')
nChars++;
// Return number of characters counted to parent process.
return nChars;
}
else {
// -- running in parent process --
int nChars = 0;
close(comm[0]);
// Send characters from command line arguments starting with
// argv[1] one at a time through pipe to child process.
char endl='\n';
for (int a = 1; a < argc; a++) {
for (int c = 0; c < strlen(argv[a]); c++) {
write(comm[1], &argv[a][c], 1);
}
}
write(comm[1], &endl, 1);
// Wait for child process to return. Reap child process.
// Receive number of characters counted via the value
// returned when the child process is reaped.
waitpid(pid, &status, 0);
printf("child counted %d chars\n", nChars);
return 0;
}
}
It seems to run endlessly. It must be stuck in one of the loops. What is
going wrong?