HOW TO CREATE NEW PROCESS WITH FORK IN PYTHON?

fork() is an operation whereby a process creates a copy of itself. It is usually a system call, implemented in the kernel. With this system call, it creates a child process that runs concurrently with the process that created it (Parent Process).

It takes no parameters and returns an integer value. Below are different values returned by fork().

Negative Value: the creation of a child process was unsuccessful.

Zero: Returned to the newly created child process.

Positive value: Returned to parent or caller. The value contains the process ID of the newly created child process.

Implementation with Python

# getpid() : getpid() returns the process ID (PID) of the calling process.

import os


def ParentProcess():
    for i in range(1,10):
        print("Parent Proc: %d", os.getpid())
    print("Parent process exiting")


def ChildProcess():
    for i in range(1,10):
        print("Child Proc: %d"%(i))
    print("Child process exiting")


# Fork and create a child process
retVal = os.fork()
print("Return value is %d"%(retVal))
if retVal is 0:
    ChildProcess()

else:
    ParentProcess()