tail head cat sleep
QR code linking to this page

Manual Pages  — NICE

NAME

nice – set program scheduling priority

CONTENTS

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

int
nice(int incr);

DESCRIPTION

This interface is obsoleted by setpriority(2).

The nice() function adds incr to the scheduling priority of the process. The priority is a value in the range -20 to 20. The default priority is 0; lower priorities cause more favorable scheduling. Only the super-user may lower priorities.

Children inherit the priority of their parent processes via fork(2).

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, nice() returns 0, and errno is unchanged. Otherwise, -1 is returned, the process' nice value is not changed, and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

The nice() function will fail if:
[EPERM]
  The incr argument is negative and the caller does not have appropriate privileges.

SEE ALSO

nice(1), fork(2), setpriority(2), renice(8)

STANDARDS

The nice() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX.1") except for the return value. This implementation returns 0 upon successful completion but the standard requires returning the new nice value, which could be -1.

HISTORY

A nice() syscall appeared in AT&T v6 .

NICE (3) February 28, 2015

tail head cat sleep
QR code linking to this page


Please direct any comments about this manual page service to Ben Bullock. Privacy policy.

Modern Unix impedes progress in computer science, wastes billions of dollars, and destroys the common sense of many who seriously use it.
— The Unix Haters' handbook