Terminology question: What do we call a process before/after an exec()?

[Avi E. Gross]

When a process does a fork()/exec() (or system()), I am used to using words
like "parent" and "child" to refer to the process depending on what PID was
returned from the fork(). Similarly, I have used "grandparent" and
"grandchild" -- and even "sibling" to refer to other relationships. Some of
the processes I generate easily go 7 generations and more.

I am not aware of any terminology (of an anthromorphic nature) to describe
the state of a process immediately before an exec() or after. It is not
really a parent-child relationship -- it is more like a sex-change operation
or reincarnation. In reality, the born-again process shares many
characteristics of its cognate -- such as open file descriptors and process
table space, but may have a different name and program text.

Can anyone suggest a reasonable (and hopefully humurous :-) set of names that
can be used to talk about these processes? What does one call the result of
several exec's in a row? Does it matter which flavor of exec (execl, execv,
execle, execve, execlp, execvp) was used? Can such a process find out whether
it was the result of an exec from another process, or whether it was the
exec of the original shell (hopefully ksh)?

All kidding aside, I am curious whether other people have felt the need for
a way to refer to several versions of the same process. I have recently been
creating such processes and using terms like "overlayed process" doesn't
excite me.
-- 
-=> Avi E. Gross @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories (201) 576-6241
 suggested paths: [ihnp4, allegra, cbosg, hogpc, ...]!pegasus!avi