Process control block
Data structure storing a computer process's information / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A process control block (PCB), also sometimes called a process descriptor, is a data structure used by a computer operating system to store all the information about a process.
When a process is created (initialized or installed), the operating system creates a corresponding process control block, which specifies and tracks the process state (i.e. new, ready, running, waiting or terminated). Since it is used to track process information, the PCB plays a key role in context switching.[1]
An operating system kernel stores PCBs in a process table.[2]
The current working directory of a process is one of the properties that the kernel stores in the process's PCB.[3]