Your OO approach appeals to me - I've been on somewhat of an OO-FP kick lately - and in your code I think I see a potentially clean, maintainable way to implement the required features.

BTW, regarding memory worries: Look for my response to zentara. One of the reasons I'm using fork() is because the OS can do some wonderful tricks with it to keep memory usage down.

I appreciate all the thought you've put into this. :)