What is difference between a job and a process in Unix?

Question

What is the difference between a job and a process in Unix ? Can you please give an example ?

Answer 1

Jobs are processes which are started by a shell. The shell keeps track of these in a job table. The jobs command shows a list of active background processes. They get a jobspec number which is not the pid of the process. Commands like fg use the jobspec id.

In the spirit of Jürgen Hötzel's example:

find $HOME | sort &
[1] 15317
$ jobs
[1]+  Running                 find $HOME | sort &
$ fg
find $HOME | sort
  C-c C-z
[1]+  Stopped                 find $HOME | sort
$ bg 1
[1]+ find $HOME | sort &

Try the examples yourself and look at the man pages.