Parent Process - Unix

Unix

In the operating system Unix, every process except process 0 (the swapper) is created when another process executes the fork system call. The process that invoked fork is the parent process and the newly-created process is the child process. Every process (except process 0) has one parent process, but can have many child processes.

The operating system kernel identifies each process by its process identifier. Process 0 is a special process that is created when the system boots; after forking a child process (process 1), process 0 becomes the swapper process (sometimes also known as the "idle task"). Process 1, known as init, is the ancestor of every other process in the system.