Difference between process and program

 

To understand the concept of operating system you need to first understand the main two terms program and process most of the people are confused between them so let’s clear the confusion and start the topic of Difference between process and program.

Let’s consider both the term different and understand both one by one.

What is a Program?

A program is a set of instruction to achieve some output. Let’s understand by the example suppose you need to do something in firefox browser for that you have one instruction file named firefox.exe it calls program. 

Remember when you write some block of code and compiled it, then it generates .exe file for every code which is compiled.  

And here the remembering thing is any program never stored in primary memory it always stored in secondary memory and work through the kernel.

What is a Process?

 

When you have an executable file like .exe  and whenever you run that code to generate the output this is the process. Basically the process is we can say the execution of a particular file or a program. 

For example, you have written one code to do sum of two numbers and when you click on that .exe file at that time process is starts to show output on a terminal. 

Hope so you understand both the term lets take the overview of the difference between program and process.

 

Difference between program and process.

    

Program	Process
Program is a file which contains a set of instruction	The process is an execution of any program.
Program is executable.	Non-executable.
The program has longer lifespan until you remove it.	The process has a shorter lifespan.
Program file needs some resources.	Process does’t need any resource.