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The word process means a running program. Emacs itself runs in a process of this sort. However, in Emacs Lisp, a process is a Lisp object that designates a subprocess created by Emacs process. External subprocesses, such as shells, GDB, ftp, and compilers, may be used to extend the processing capability of Emacs.
A process takes input from Emacs and returns output to Emacs for further manipulation. Both text and signals can be communicated between Emacs and a subprocess.
Processes have no read syntax. They print in hash notation, giving the name of the process:
(process-list)
=> (#<process shell>)
See section Processes, for information about functions that create, delete, return information about, send input or signals to, and receive output from processes.
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