NAME
nice —
execute a utility at an altered
scheduling priority
SYNOPSIS
nice |
[-n increment]
utility [argument ...] |
DESCRIPTION
The nice utility runs
utility at an altered scheduling priority, by
incrementing its “nice” value by the specified
increment, or a default value of 10. The lower the
nice value of a process, the higher its scheduling priority.
The superuser may specify a negative increment in order to run a utility with a higher scheduling priority.
Some shells may provide a builtin nice
command which is similar or identical to this utility. Consult the
builtin(1) manual page.
ENVIRONMENT
The PATH environment variable is used to
locate the requested utility if the name contains no
‘/’ characters.
EXIT STATUS
If utility is invoked, the exit status of
nice is the exit status of
utility.
An exit status of 126 indicates utility was found, but could not be executed. An exit status of 127 indicates utility could not be found.
EXAMPLES
Execute utility ‘date’ at priority 5 assuming the priority of the shell is 0:
nice -n 5 dateExecute utility ‘date’ at priority -19 assuming the priority of the shell is 0 and you are the super-user:
nice -n 16 nice -n -35
dateCOMPATIBILITY
The traditional
-increment option has been
deprecated but is still supported.
SEE ALSO
builtin(1), csh(1), getpriority(2), setpriority(2), renice(8)
STANDARDS
The nice utility conforms to
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
A nice utility appeared in
Version 4 AT&T UNIX.