When building robust Node.js applications, you often need to access information about the running process and control how your application exits. Node.js provides the process object, which includes properties and methods that allow you to interact with the current process. Three important aspects for process management are process.pid, process.argv, and process.exit().

The process.pid property returns the process identifier (PID) of the current Node.js process. This is useful for logging, debugging, or interacting with the process from outside scripts. The process.argv property is an array containing the command-line arguments passed when the Node.js process was launched. The first element is the path to the Node.js executable, the second is the path to your script, and any subsequent elements are additional command-line arguments you provide.

To control how your application exits, you use process.exit(). By default, calling process.exit() will end the process with an exit code of 0, which signals a successful execution. You can also pass a specific exit code to indicate different types of errors or statuses. Exit codes are important for automation scripts and monitoring tools to determine if your application ran successfully or encountered an issue.