“Spawning” is the process of creating a new process in an operating system. Spawning often includes the following steps:
- Parent Process Preparation: The parent process prepares to create a new process.
- Forking: The process creation mechanism frequently uses forking in Unix-like operating systems. The parent process initiates the fork() system call, which generates a copy of itself known as the child process.
- Program Loading: Once the child process is created, it loads the program code it should run.
- Execution: The child process begins to run its program code independently of the parent process. It has its own memory space, execution context, and resources the operating system provides.
- Termination: When terminated, it releases any assigned resources and exits, handing control back to the parent process.