A "Proc" in the context of programming and operating systems, specifically in Unix and Linux, refers to the /proc filesystem. The /proc filesystem is a special filesystem in Unix-like operating systems that presents information about processes and other system information in a hierarchical file-like structure, providing a more convenient and standardized method for dynamically accessing process data held in the kernel than traditional tracing methods or direct access to kernel memory[1].
The /proc filesystem acts as an interface to internal data structures in the kernel. It can be used to obtain information about the system and to control the operation of the operating system. For example, each running process on the system is represented by a directory with the same name as the process ID (PID) under the /proc directory. Each of these directories contains files and sub-directories providing information about the process, such as its environment, memory, and status[1].
