NAME

nice — execute a utility with an altered scheduling priority

SYNOPSIS

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 superuser 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).

The options are as follows:

-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:

Otherwise, the exit status of nice shall be that of utility.

SEE ALSO

csh(1), getpriority(2), renice(8)

STANDARDS

The nice utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

The historic -increment option has been deprecated but is still supported in this implementation.

nice also exists as a built-in to csh(1), though with a different syntax.

HISTORY

A nice utility appeared in Version 4 AT&T UNIX.