I do mean daemons of course . I'm a newbie to programming with *NIX, but I do know my way around C/C++ (which I'm choosing for this project). What I'm trying to do is create a process (most likely daemon from what I've read/understand about them (which isn't really much) that gets a crack at input before the shell does. Upon finding a special token, I'd like to decide at that point to either pass it to the shell, or keep it to myself. My question is this: how do I set up the framework for such an application? I'm completly lost on this topic as I have no idea where to begin. A point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.