Pid

A pid is the process identication number. Special pids are swapper (0) and init (1). OpenBSD (by default) and FreeBSD chose random pid numbers when a new process is forked, other systems chose the next sequentially available number, when the maximum pid number is reached the number will wrap around back to the beginning. This means that pids are recycled and on a busy system it may not take long for a new process to take the pid of another process that just ended.