NICE(1) BSD General Commands Manual NICE(1)NAMEnice — execute a utility with an altered scheduling priority
SYNOPSISnice [-n increment] utility [argument ...]
DESCRIPTIONnice 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 neg‐
ative increment. The priority can be adjusted over a range of -20 (the
highest) to 20 (the lowest).
Available options:
-n increment
A positive or negative decimal integer used to modify the system
scheduling priority of utility.
DIAGNOSTICS
The nice utility shall exit 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 shall be that of utility.
COMPATIBILITY
The historic -increment option has been deprecated but is still supported
in this implementation.
SEE ALSOcsh(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.
BUGSnice 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.
BSD June 6, 1993 BSD
