How to set process ID in Linux for a specific program

Question

I was wondering if there is some way to force to use some specific process ID to Linux to some application before running it. I need to know in advance the process ID.

Answer 1

As many already suggested you cannot set directly a PID but usually shells have facilities to know which is the last forked process ID.

For example in bash you can lunch an executable in background (appending &) and find its PID in the variable $!. Example:

$ lsof >/dev/null &
[1] 15458
$ echo $!
15458