NAME
nice
- execute a utility with an altered scheduling priority
SYNOPSIS
nice
[-n increment]
utility
[argument ...]
DESCRIPTION
nice
runs
utility
at an altered scheduling priority.
If an
increment
is given, it is used; otherwise
an increment of 10 is assumed.
The super-user can run utilities with priorities higher than normal by using
a negative
increment.
The priority can be adjusted over a
range of -20 (the highest) to 20 (the lowest).
A priority of 19 or 20
will prevent a process from taking any cycles from others at nice 0 or
better.
Available options:
- -n increment
-
A positive or negative decimal integer used to modify the system scheduling
priority of
utility.
EXIT STATUS
The
nice
utility exits with one of the following values:
- 1-125
-
An error occurred in the
nice
utility.
- 126
-
The
utility
was found but could not be invoked.
- 127
-
The
utility
could not be found.
Otherwise, the exit status of
nice
will be that of
utility.
COMPATIBILITY
The historic
-increment
option has been deprecated but is still supported in this implementation.
SEE ALSO
csh(1),
getpriority(2),
setpriority(2),
renice(8)
STANDARDS
The
nice
utility conforms to
IEEE Std 1003.2-1992 (``POSIX.2'') .
HISTORY
A
nice
utility appeared in
Version 6 AT&T UNIX
.
BUGS
nice
is built into
csh(1)
with a slightly different syntax than described here.
The form
`nice +10'
nices to positive nice, and
`nice -10'
can be used
by the super-user to give a process more of the processor.