Yes, it is part of a homework assignment ( as I have just caroused
further in the net and seen this deadly thread)  but my assignment had
to do with writing a filter to strip the blanks from stdin. As I think
you can  plainly see, I have far exceeded that and am asking questions
that go beyond the scope of the homework.
    For those that need to contact my professor, to verify that this is

Ask about project1, question 2 the filters for cos331 Operating Systems.
Sean.