Expert C++

Processes

A process is an image of a program running in the memory. When we start a program, the OS reads the content of the program from the hard disk, copies it to the memory, and points the CPU to the starting instruction of the program. The process has its private virtual address space, stack, and heap. Two processes don't interfere with each other in any way. That's a guarantee provided by the OS. That also makes a programmer's job very difficult if they aim for Interprocess Communication (IPC). We are not discussing low-level hardware features in this book but you should have a general understanding of what is going on when we run a program. It really depends on the underlying hardware—more specifically, the kind and structure of the ...