how to correctly use fork, exec, wait

Question

The shell i'm writing needs to execute a program given to it by the user. Here's the very shortened simplified version of my program

int main()
{
    pid_t pid = getpid(); // this is the parents pid

    char *user_input = NULL;
    size_t line_sz = 0;
    ssize_t  line_ct = 0; 

    line_ct = getline(&user_input, &line_sz, stdin); //so get user input, store in user_input

    for (;;)
    {
        pid_t child_pid = fork(); //fork a duplicate process

        pid_t child_ppid = getppid(); //get the child's parent pid

        if (child_ppid == pid) //if the current process is a child of the main process
        {
            exec(); //here I need to execute whatever program was given to user_input
            exit(1); //making sure to avoid fork bomb
        }

        wait(); //so if it's the parent process we need to wait for the child process to finish, right?

    }
}

1. Have I forked the new process & checked to see if it's a child process correctly
2. What exec could I use here for what I'm trying to do? What is the most simple way
3. What are my arguments to wait? the documentation I'm looking at isn't helping much

Assume the user might input something like ls, ps, pwd

Thanks.

Edit:

const char* hold = strdup(input_line);
char* argv[2]; 

argv[0] = input_line;
argv[1] = NULL;

char* envp[1];
envp[0] = NULL;

execve(hold, argv, envp);

Answer 1

Here's a simple, readable solution:

pid_t parent = getpid();
pid_t pid = fork();

if (pid == -1)
{
    // error, failed to fork()
} 
else if (pid > 0)
{
    int status;
    waitpid(pid, &status, 0);
}
else 
{
    // we are the child
    execve(...);
    _exit(EXIT_FAILURE);   // exec never returns
}

The child can use the stored value parent if it needs to know the parent's PID (though I don't in this example). The parent simply waits for the child to finish. Effectively, the child runs "synchronously" inside the parent, and there is no parallelism. The parent can query status to see in what manner the child exited (successfully, unsuccessfully, or with a signal).