Tribblix: manual page: nice.1

NICE(1) User Commands NICE(1)

NAME

nice - invoke a command with an altered scheduling priority

SYNOPSIS

/usr/bin/nice [-increment | -n increment] command
[argument]...

/usr/xpg4/bin/nice [-increment | -n increment] command
[argument]...

csh Builtin
nice [-increment | +increment] [command]

DESCRIPTION

The nice utility invokes command, requesting that it be run with a
different system scheduling priority. The priocntl(1) command is a
more general interface to scheduler functions.

The invoking process (generally the user's shell) must be in a
scheduling class that supports nice.

If the C shell (see csh(1)) is used, the full path of the command
must be specified. Otherwise, the csh built-in version of nice will
be invoked. See csh Builtin below.

If nice executes commands with arguments, it uses the default shell
/usr/bin/sh (see sh(1)).

csh Builtin
nice is also a csh built-in command with behavior different from the
utility versions. See csh(1) for description.

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

-increment | -n increment
increment is a positive or negative
decimal integer that has the same effect
on the execution of the utility as if
the utility had called the nice()
function with the numeric value of the
increment option-argument. See nice(2).
nice() errors, other than EINVAL, are
ignored. If not specified, an increment
of 10 is assumed.

The super-user may run commands with
priority higher than normal by using a
negative increment such as -10. A
negative increment assigned by an
unprivileged user is ignored.

OPERANDS

The following operands are supported:

command
The name of a command that is to be invoked. If command
names any of the special built-in utilities (see
shell_builtins(1)), the results are undefined.

argument
Any string to be supplied as an argument when invoking
command.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

See environ(7) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of nice: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES, PATH, and NLSPATH.

EXIT STATUS

If command is invoked, the exit status of nice will be the exit
status of command. Otherwise, nice will exit with one of the
following values:

1-125
An error occurred.

126
command was found but could not be invoked.

127
command could not be found.

ATTRIBUTES