procpidstatus

Procpidstatus is a term used to describe the set of information that describes the current state of a running process identified by its process identifier (PID) in a computer system. While not a formal standard, it appears in documentation and tooling that expose per-process details and is often used as a generic label for per-process status data. In Unix-like systems this information is commonly exposed by the proc filesystem under /proc/[pid], with files such as status and stat providing both human-readable and numeric fields about the process.

The data encompassed by procpidstatus typically includes a mix of identifiers, state indicators, and resource usage. Common fields include the process ID (pid), parent process ID (ppid), user and group identifiers (uid/gid and sometimes euid/egid), the command name (comm) or command line (cmdline), and the process state (for example R for running, S for sleeping). Memory usage details such as virtual size (VmSize) and resident set size (VmRSS) may be present, along with CPU times (utime and stime), start time, and the number of threads. Some sources also expose priority, scheduling policy, and various flags.

Access methods vary by operating system. On Linux, procpidstatus-like data is typically obtained by reading /proc/[pid]/status or /proc/[pid]/stat, or via higher-level tools such as ps or top. In other environments, equivalent process information may be retrieved through system APIs or different proc interfaces. Because field names, units, and availability can differ across platforms, implementations of procpidstatus should account for OS-specific variations and permission requirements.

See also: /proc, process management, ps, top, procfs.