node.js child process - difference between spawn & fork

Question

This might seem like a basic question, but I could not find any documentation :

What is the difference between forking & spawning a node.js process? I have read

Answer 1

• spawn − child_process.spawn launches a new process with a given command.
• fork − The child_process.fork method is a special case of the spawn() to create child processes.

The spawn() Method

child_process.spawn method launches a new process with a given command. It has the following signature −

child_process.spawn(command[, args][, options])

Read more about options

The spawn() method returns streams (stdout &stderr) and it should be used when the process returns a volume amount of data. spawn() starts receiving the response as soon as the process starts executing.

The fork() Method

child_process.fork method is a special case of spawn() to create Node processes. It has the following signature −

 child_process.fork(modulePath[, args][, options])

The fork method returns an object with a built-in communication channel in addition to having all the methods in a normal ChildProcess instance.