how could i write this program: cat < apa | wc | wc > bepa

[strugglingman]

hi,

i am a new programmer in linux programming, i want to write a program that demoes the function of shell, i just write some simple functions, for example, i have written
ls | wc -w
wc -l < somefile > anotherfile

but they could just run separately, if i need to write more complex, such as:
ls | wc -w | sort
i do not know how to do that, the most problem is that i do not know what order should i make in the program, if there is only one "|", i could use the pipe to read what the first part runs then make the result as input of the second part, but now there are two "|", i do not know how to do it

[strugglingman]

i could use execlp("ls","ls"NULL) to get the result and it will output to the standard output, which is now redirected to one end of pipe, the other end is used to give input for wc -w, but if there are two or more "|", how could i finish this function

[strugglingman]

I use the following code to do the pipe program such as: ls | wc -w for only one "|", but if there are more "|", i do not know how to deal with it

void pipeProcess(char *args1[], char *args2[]) {
    int thepipe[2], pid;

    if(pipe(thepipe) == -1)
        oops("Can not get a pipe", 1);
    /* Create a new process */
    if((pid = fork()) == -1)
        oops("Can not fork", 2);

    if(pid >0) {/* This is parent process */
        close(thepipe[1]);      /* parent does not write to pipe */
        if(dup2(thepipe[0], 0) == -1)   /* let parent read interface attaches to stdin */
            oops("Could not redirect stdin", 3);
        close(thepipe[0]);      /* close thepipe[0] interface because it has attached to stdin */
        execvp(args2[0], args2);
        oops(*args2, 4);
    }

    /* Child process executes av[1] and writesinto pipe */
    close(thepipe[0]);      /* Child does not read from pipe */
    if(dup2(thepipe[1], 1) == -1)
        oops("Could not redirect stdout", 4);
    close(thepipe[1]);
    execvp(args1[0], args1);
    oops(*args1, 5);
}