What command shows that the 'nc' file is running as a process?

• A. ls
• B. cat
• C. grep
• D. ps

Answer: (D)

To confirm whether a program is actually running, you check the process table with the process status utility. The command that shows this directly is ps. It reports active processes, including details like the PID and the exact command line. If nc is running, you’ll see an entry for nc in the output, which proves the file is executing as a process. On many systems you’d use something like ps aux or ps -ef to get a full list of running processes, and you can filter for nc with ps aux | grep nc if you want a quick check.

Why the other commands aren’t suitable on their own: ls just lists files in a directory, not running processes; cat outputs the contents of a file; grep searches text and doesn’t by itself show processes unless it’s fed with another command’s output (for example, filtering ps output).