NodeJS

Child processes

spawn - "[creates] a new process and we can use it to pass that command any arguments". Has exit, disconnect, error, close, and message event streams that can be hooked into. Each child has standard stdio streams, which we can access using child.stdin, child.stdout, and child.stderr. Does not use a shell by default, but can add it with { stdio: 'inherit', shell: true } in options
exec - creates a shell and executes the command. Also it "buffers the command's generated output and passes the whole output value to a callback function (instead of using streams, which is what spawn does)". Can use shell syntax eg, pipes | (although, watch out for security vulnerabilities! eg, ; rm -rf ~)
- Good if data is small
execFile - execute a file without using a shell
fork - like spawn, but can received and send messages from the process global

Code examples: